Elainie
by The Scorpion
Summary: A little bit of death washes up on Erik's shore and Christine soon develops a fixation that haunts her to the edges of madness.
1. Washed Up

**Elainie**

**Washed Up**

There had come a time when Erik would take Christine for pleasant walks along the shore of his lake or out for a row about the waters with no intention of taking her anywhere other than back around again to his home. It was good to get out of doors, he said, healthy to take some fresh air. And she had never quite been sure if he had been taking himself seriously or trying to amuse her with that morbid sense of humor that she could never fully appreciate. At first, Christine eagerly accepted these outing invitations as an escape from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the strange underground house that had no windows and no doors. However, soon it came that she was able to sincerely enjoy the brief exercises for the time they allowed her to spend with him. On this artificial bank where the organ did not sound and where stave after stave of music did not follow, Erik was no longer her stern teacher or the ominous supreme being he had always been in her mind. He was simply a man, walking by her side or pulling the oars and speaking to her of exotic lands or enticing adventures. Together, with only the soft lapping of water playing in their ears, the winter air in the vault was filled with their voices as they spoke as any ordinary couple might speak, exhaling puffs of steam on the bank of any ordinary lake.

But today the air was silent and Christine walked alone. Erik had taken the boat that morning and Christine had long since become lonely. When she had found the usually invisible door left open for her, it indicated better than any note of apology that Erik meant her not to miss their regular outing on occasion that he would not be back in time. And so she had gone without him. She might use the time to think. Her thoughts had not been her own lately. Each time she came back down to dwell with Erik, he took over her mind with his instructions of music and pressure for growth. After lessons and study, she was often so exhausted that, when she did not go straight to bed, she allowed him to then take complete control for his own motives and fill her head with more music, more magic, more mysteries of the darkness. There was no more room for the Christine of old until he had to leave her alone to go about some business as he had done today. And now, left alone in the abyss, Christine came pouring back into Christine, and it was at times like this that the stubborn assertion of her female independence pushed her to take action that was never completely wise.

There was nothing dangerous about walking on the banks of the Phantom's lake alone in the dark. At least not for Christine. But although Erik had suggested it, he would have been nervous to know that she had actually ventured out. After all it was winter, and although the bitter weather did not penetrate below ground, sometimes the stones did become icy. But Christine was lonely and in truth, she missed him, and perhaps as she strolled slowly along the water's edge, she might all the sooner hear the distant sound of telltale oars.

The lakeside scenery in the mysterious blue light of the catacombs was nothing more than grey stone blighted here and there by black moss. This edge of the water was uncurving and, gradually becoming distressed in her loneliness by the desolate surroundings, Christine continued her walk with her eyes adverted to the ground directly before her. Every now and then she would look up and hope to see something different or interesting or alive, but here five stories below ground, she could not expect to be surprised by anything more than blue and black and grey. It was not until she had already begun her reluctant return to the invisible door that, upon looking up, she was startled to a stop by the sight of something marring the seamless edge of the water. Something white…Something pink and white.

She stared at it in confusion for perhaps a couple minutes before common sense and curiosity bade her move closer. But after only two steps of tentative approach, she broke into a run, dashing to it, and fell on her knees where the water met the ledge. It was a little girl! Such a little girl, half submerged and bobbing gently up against the ledge. The natural rippling wavelets of the lake washed back and forth across a button nose and a round cheek, fresh and rosy with youth. A dress of lace and petal pink clung to ivory limbs and billowed about her child's body like cherub's wings.

Tears managed to cross Christine's cheeks before she had even pulled the girl from the water and into her own lap.

"Wake up…" Her voice was a choked whisper as she gently patted the girl's cheek.

She was so cold! Tiny perfect ice crystals coated the long golden lashes of the closed eyelids that gave the impression of peaceful slumber, and her hands were clutched into little fists against the chill. But how her pursed bow lips were tinted with the red of berries that could never grow in such frozen air… Such a sweetness should never be so cold!

"Please wake up!…Please…" Christine anxiously smoothed back the drenched hair from the tiny forehead, trying as tenderly as she could to rouse her from unconsciousness. The child could not have been more than five years old.

"Wake up, please! Wake up…Wake up… I'll take you inside. I'll make a fire for you. I will boil you something warm to drink. Please, please wake up!" Christine's hand continued to stroke and pat the numbed face while her other frantically twisted and squeezed icy water from the little pink dress for but a few unrequited moments more before she collected the child in her arms and rose to continue back to the door. But she did not make it far in her panicked state, stumbling on her own skirts, heavy with absorbed water, as she rose, and she fell again to her knees. Christine moaned at the throb, but the child still made no sound.

"Please!" she sobbed, as hysterical tears clotted in her throat. And she continued to cling to the girl, clutching her to her breast as she rocked back and forth on her knees amid her sobbing pleas that could not be controlled.

And it was in this state that Erik had found her. When his hand fell on her shoulder, Christine started from her position, looking up enough to allow Erik a clear understanding of the circumstances. He lowered himself by Christine's side and gently separated her from the child. Christine watched him closely as he put a hand to the girl's neck for only a moment.

"Christine, she is dead."

"No!" Christine pulled the girl back to herself, resuming her efforts to awaken her. "She can't be dead! Look at her face! Look at her… She is so young…So full of life…"

Erik once again carefully removed the girl from Christine's clutching arms. "She is quite dead, my dear." He lifted the child and stood.

"But…No… How?" Christine remained on the ground, wiping pathetically at tears in her eyes.

"I suspect she drowned." In respectful silence, Erik watched Christine battle fresh tears of mourning for several very long minutes before he spoke again. "Please come along, my dear… I cannot carry the both of you. And if you stay out here any longer, wet as you are, you too shall freeze…"

Christine nodded and brushed back the hair that had fallen into her face. She picked up her skirts carefully this time before standing and then slowly followed Erik back to his door.

Inside, he laid the wet girl on the wine colored divan and then knelt beside it and began to examine her slowly, turning her face, lifting each of her arms, looking closely at her hands.

Christine stood directly behind him with her arms wrapped around herself as she watched with both concern and curiosity while sniffling intermittently.

Erik suddenly turned around to face her. "Go change," he ordered.

She took a step back, startled, and then nodded in assent, but did not immediately go. "What is it you are looking for…?"

She was certain she heard him sigh then as he turned back to the girl and placed one of his long white hands across her little brow.

"Signs of struggle…"

Christine could not contain a gasp. "Do you think she might have been—"

"There are none," Erik cut her off before she could finish. He stood and moved to a cupboard in the hall where he found a towel to dry his hands.

Christine followed him, shivering slightly, and hoping for more words of explanation. But Erik only turned to her with another stern look:

"Go change."

Her eyes locked with his for a moment of hindrance, but then she nodded again and this time turned and went directly to her room.

She undressed quickly and hung her wet and stained clothes in the bath to dry. Naked, she shivered and longed for the warmth of her bed or a fire. But it was the middle of the afternoon and her mind was quickly filling with questions of How's and Why's that would not soon let her rest. Who was this girl? Where did she come by Erik's lake? Had she been dead already then? Or was it Erik's lake where she had drowned? How did she drown? Why was she not wearing a coat or hat or gloves in March? And why was she all alone? Christine dressed again, easily becoming impatient with buttons and clasps, but as soon as she had finished, she went back out to the parlor.

The child was gone.

"Erik!" Christine cried in alarm. "Erik, what have you done with her?" Somewhere down the hall, she heard a door close. "Erik!" She quickly followed the sound and almost ran right into him in the hallway.

He studied her face with concern. "Why don't you sit down, my dear… Would you like something to drink? Some hot broth perhaps?"

Christine clenched her hands at her sides. "Where is she? I need to see her."

"No, my dear, you need to sit down." He took her lightly by the shoulders, barely touching her as he always did, and led her back into the parlor. "There is nothing you can do. And I do not want you to become fixated with death."

The bluntness of his words had a sobering effect on Christine and she obediently took a seat on the black leather couch. He had been careful not to seat her on the divan where the child had been. With a shudder, she sank against the cushions and kept her eyes adverted from the wet marks that marred that wine colored velvet across the room.

"Where is she?" she asked again, her tone much less demanding.

"She's still here, Christine. She's safe."

Christine nodded, satisfied for now and closed her eyes.

He lingered for a moment of misgiving, hesitant to leave her alone, but when she did not move and did not open her eyes, he went toward the kitchen, telling her softly, "I will bring you something."

He was quick about it and returned to find Christine in the same position. "Take this." His tone had become much more sympathetic and he was comforted when she sat up and gratefully took the cup of broth from him.

"Thank you…" She clutched the cup between her hands and stared down into the steaming liquid for a long time in silent thought. "I just wish…"

He had been watching her, waiting for her to speak. "What?"

She sighed as she breathed in the scent of the steam. "I just wish I knew who she was… I just wish I knew her name."

Erik's melodious voice became reverently soft. "Elainie."

Her eyes snapped up to meet his, the broth immediately forgotten. "How do you know?"

At first he did not respond for moment of concerned consideration, but then he came and sat next to her on the couch, his weight causing her to sink closer to him. Slowly, he took the cup from her hands and replaced it with something small. As he turned away to set the cup on the table, Christine stared down at her palms in hushed fascination. He had given her a thin silver necklace, far too small to be worn by anyone with a throat larger than a child's. On the chain was a single pendant, a heart molded out of silver, hollow and light as a feather. For a moment Christine thought it could be a locket, but she felt no clasp to open it.

Erik turned back to Christine and watched her with a strange sense of sorrow as her fingers traced on one side of the heart, the engraved word "Songbird," and on the other, the simple name, "Elainie."


	2. Songbird

**Songbird**

"Papa where are we?" Christine looked up from the summer night fields of her surroundings to the large, comfortable shape of her father as he led her to a warmer place by the bonfire.

He sat his small daughter down at the fire near where other families with young children sat. "This is a land called France. They speak French here."

Christine gasped with wide eyes. "We're not in Germany anymore?"

He loosened the shawl from around her shoulders. "We haven't been in Germany for a long time, don't you remember?"

"I remember now. It tasted better in Germany than it did in Belgium. How long have we been walking, Papa?"

"With this fair?"

"Since Belgium?"

"Since the land of the Dutch."

"Is that far?"

"Far or long? We have been stopping to sing all the time. That makes it much longer than it is far." He cleared his throat with a deep, rough cough that sent shivers down her spine.

"Oh…" Christine thought she understood, but a moment later, she did not care, and she was distracted by the sounds of children chasing grasshoppers in the fields.

She leapt to her feet. "Can I go play, Papa?"

"After some supper." He tugged her back into her seat as he set about opening his knapsack.

She watched him with an eager stomach. "Will we see fairies in France too?"

"If you're a good little girl and say your prayers, who knows what you'll see."

She gasped with childish glee. "Angels?"

"Who knows," he answered with cryptic humor and handed her the small portion of rye toast.

She took it solemnly, and began saying her prayers at once before eating.

It must have been sometime later—long after she had forgotten wanting to join the other children, and had begun to doze off to the lull of her father's voice filled with enchanting stories—that _he_ appeared.

"Look, my child!" He father stirred her awake. "Do you see him there? Out beyond the circle, where the firelight cannot reach?"

She rubbed at her eyes. Everyone else around the fire was quiet or asleep. But out there, where her father pointed, she saw the tall, black figure that blended into the night. He did not move. Frozen disturbingly where he stood except where the wind pulled at the jagged edges of his black cloak, as if the air itself was discomforted by his strange presence.

"I see him Papa, who is he?"

Her father's voice was at her ear. "Look at him closely."

She peered across the fire, into the night where only the moon illuminated the windblown waves of the field grasses. "He has no face, Papa…"

"Yes, he has no face. Inside that black hood, it is only the dark air of the night. But do you see his eyes? His two burning eyes?"

"Yes, Papa, I can see them even in the dark, even though he has no face."

"And do you see his hands? Where he clutches the staff of his blade?"

The hands were as immobile as the rest, but she saw them then, and they were real. "Yes, Papa. He has no face but he has two human hands!"

"No, look a little closer, my child. Look beyond the dancing light of the fire. They are not hands made of flesh."

"Bones!" she gasped. "They are hands made of long white bones, aren't they?"

"Yes. Yes, they are. Do you know who he is now?"

Christine curled closer to the protecting embrace of her father. "Yes. Yes, I do. But shouldn't we be afraid, Papa?"

"No, my little songbird," he laughed, deep and warm. "He is not here for us! He comes only for the dead, and you and I are alive."

"He looks lost, Papa… What if he can't find who he is looking for and he chooses us instead?"

"Don't be afraid, my little songbird. Look, he is already gone."

And he was. Try as she might, she could no longer see him out there. The field was empty and the forest too far away. A young rabbit leapt through the grass and disappeared again.

She looked back to her father, touched by the look of dreams in the dancing light on his calm features. "Will he be back?"

He smiled at her reassuringly. "Eventually, eventually… He always comes back."

She wanted to see him again. "Will he come for me?"

He pulled her into his arms and she felt safe. "Not as long as you keep singing, my little songbird. Keep singing night songs to life."

And as he rocked her, she did not know which of them fell asleep first… But he was already still and quiet when she heard the voice.

_"Songbird_," it whispered. It was the hollow voice of the wind.

With difficulty she opened the heaviness of her eyelids and looked across the fire. The dark figure was back, and now she was alone. Her father was gone, the travelers were gone. She was alone with the fire and the figure. He was watching her and she knew she should be afraid because he was so much closer than he had been before and he was watching only her. But he was so frozen that she felt safe. As long as he did not move, she was safe.

So close… He was almost in the fire. And closer. The fire was closer. He was coming through the fire without moving, and he was watching her! But she was safe as long as he was frozen.

She began to say her prayers again. She wanted to close her eyes. He had no face! Only burning eyes that grew and grew as they sucked in the heat of the fire that began to envelop them both, and two hands of bone. Two hands so long and white, wrapped around the staff of his scythe.

Stay still, she prayed. Stay still…

He was closer now. She knew he was closer. And then the hands—They moved. Slowly and tightly, the staff twisted between them. He was frozen no more.

_"Songbird,"_ the wind shrieked through the fire.

Christine screamed.

It was no child's scream, it was her own scream, and she was awake now in her own bed in Erik's house. She was sitting up, tangled in the lavender sheets, painfully aware of the racing of her own heartbeat.

She looked around in the dim light of her surroundings slowly, making sure they were real. Her calming pulse fluttered timidly when her eyes came to rest on Erik, who was looking at her with surprised concern from across the room. She did not bother to wonder at the fact that he was in her bedroom in the middle of the night, for she was glad that he was there just now.

He set down the pitcher of fresh water he had brought for her basin. His entrance to her room as she slept never usually woke her, and he wondered if that momentary terror that had flashed in her eyes as they snapped open was his doing.

"A nightmare?" he asked softly.

She nodded and moved back where she sat to curl against the headboard. "Yes… I mean no… It was just a dream…"

He moved closer to her bedside. He had been worried the trauma of the day would affect her sleep that night, but he had told her to go to bed all the same. Letting her alter her normal agenda on account of the girl would have been no better.

"A frightening dream?"

"No…" She sighed, furrowing her fair brow that felt cool now as the glistening there evaporated. She looked down to her hands. "I don't know how to explain…"

Her fingers were still clenched in the tight fists of her wakening and she uncurled them tenderly now. She smoothed her left hand against the sheets at her thigh, but when she opened her right hand, she found inside that little, silver necklace. She must have been holding it the whole time as she slept, clutching it so tightly that the heart pendant had pressed into her palm, leaving its shape there, a ghostly white imprint. She plucked it gently from her skin and flexed her hand a couple times. But when she looked again, the shape was still there, red now against the pale color of her hand, as blood flowed back into it. And written in the same engraved script of the silver pendant, was the word _Songbird _temporarily branded backwards in her flesh.

"It will be gone in a few moments."

Erik gently took the necklace from her as the shaking that began in both her hands spread to a cold shiver down her body. She pulled up the satin quilt and half glanced to the dark fireplace.

She was about to ask Erik to light it for her, but her words were lost as she turned to look up at him and was caught by the image of him slowly twining the chain of the necklace between his fingers as he examined it. Those fine, long fingers of his… Those inhumanly long, thin, white fingers…

The soft images of her father and the summer night of her dream were floating from her memory in wisps too light to grasp. But she clearly remembered the skeletal fingers…

"I think I dreamt of you…"

His eyes met hers.

"I mean of your hands… I think they were in my dream…"

"What about the rest of me?"

She glanced away, suddenly feeling conscious of how closely he stood to her bed. "I don't know…"

"Is that why you screamed yourself awake?" The sincerity of the lightness to the humor in his tone seemed questionable.

"I think so…"

It was not the answer he had anticipated. He dropped the necklace in a delft bowl on her end table.

"What time is it?" she asked before he could turn to the door.

"Late," he sighed.

She reached to the bowl and took back the necklace, winding its small chain twice around her wrist.

She took a moment to breathe deeply and then spoke softly, "Don't go…"

He returned and took a seat at the edge of the chair at her bedside. He rested his elbows on his knees, leaning forward so that his eyes were at her level, watching her intently.

"I'm fine." She tore her eyes from her wrist and looked to him. "I don't know why I cried out. I don't know what I dreamed. I only remember dark shadows…And that I was a child."

"Ah…" Erik leaned back where he sat. "A child."

Christine wrapped her arms around the quilt at her knees. "Where is she, Erik?"

His eyes seemed to frown. "Defrosting."

She shivered again. "I'm cold… It's very cold. Would you light the fire for me?"

His voice was soft, but the tone was deliberate. "I had better not, Christine. She was frozen though, and it would be best to let her thaw slowly lest she begin to smell." He moved to rise. "I will bring you another blanket if you are cold."

She shook her head. Her trembling now was not from the cold. "Let me see her, Erik. Please? I just want to see her…"

He lingered before the door. "Christine…"

She rose, taking her dressing gown from its hook. "I will not be able to rest until I see her." She took extra care as she slipped the wrist with the necklace through the frills of the sleeve.

He continued to not move as she tied the ribbons about her small waist. But then as she approached him, there was nothing he could do but consent, and he held the door open for her.

However, once in the hall, her boldness dissolved, and she followed with timid steps as he led her back to the door he had barred to her before. Before he turned the handle, she impulsively clutched at his sleeve. He glanced down at her questioningly as she pressed her lips together in hesitation.

"No," she breathed as he let go of the handle. "Let me see her." She released his sleeve and he led her through the door.

Christine had only been inside this room once before. It was a room of clinical sterility, and when she thought about it, it unnerved her to consider for what reason a man like Erik would need a laboratory. But consideration was forgotten the moment he took her around a unit of shelves and she saw the child. Elainie… She knew this child… And yet, seeing her now, it was as if she had never seen her before.

The little girl was lying on a steel table at the far end of the room, flat on her back, her arms at her sides. As Christine approached, she could see that the color of the child's flesh had paled, but the crystals had melted from her eyelashes and the hair that framed her doll's face had mostly dried into soft curls of muted gold.

Christine could come no closer than a meter or so to the table, and when she stopped walking, she felt Erik's presence pause behind her.

"You see, Christine? She's safe…"

Christine nodded and did not know whether she was happy now or whether she wanted to cry. But as she wrapped her arms around herself, her teeth began to chatter. It was even colder in this room than it had been in her own.

"I'll be right back," Erik offered as he left the room to find something warmer for her.

She watched him go only for a moment before looking back to the child.

"Elainie," she whispered saying the name the way Erik had before…like a prayer. And she felt drawn to the girl's side then. She closed the short distance to the table, gazing down at the round face of sweetness. She was an adorable little girl… As beautiful as a child so young could be… Too beautiful, she thought. Too beautiful for such a young child. It was unearthly.

"Little angel," she whispered with an even softer breath as she felt a tear edge its way onto her cheek. "Why did you die?"

She leaned down to be closer and lifted a hand… She wanted to touch her. But before she could, her eye was caught by the marks that still lingered in the soft flesh of her palm.

"Songbird…" She looked down at Elainie's closed eyes again. "Songbird?"

And then slowly, very slowly, she laid that palm over the child's smooth, white forehead. The pendant dangled from the chain around her wrist and brushed the girl's little dead lips.

Christine felt the weight of the blanket as Erik dropped it softly around her shoulders, but it did not startle her.

"She's so cold…" Christine's wavering fingers traced the round cheek to the point of the chin.

Very gently, Erik removed her hand from the child's face. "Let her rest in peace, Christine."

To his surprise, Christine clasped his hand, which felt oddly warm to her in comparison to the flesh of the dead child. She turned to look up at him with pleading, tear-filled eyes. "How did she die, Erik?"

"Christine…" He separated himself from her and moved to the other side of the table. "I am sure she drowned."

"But how do we know?" The pink dress, still wet and clinging, which separated them now seemed an impassable barrier.

"We don't Christine. We can't know."

"But aren't there ways, Erik? Isn't there a way to know?"

He seemed to sigh and she was immediately filled with hope.

"You can find out why she died. I won't be able to rest until I know why she died. Can't you, Erik? Please, I must know, I must!"

He was watching the corpse now, unable to look at Christine whose growing desperation continued to disturb him.

"Yes, there are ways…"

"You will find out for me, won't you Erik?" She took a step back from the table.

Her eyes lingered on him as he stared at the girl in silence for a very long time. Christine made her way around to his side of the table. Her voice again was a waterfall of distant murmurs, "She's so young… So pure… How could she be dead? How could she be dead and I still be alive? Why was she in your lake? Why was it I who found her? Who put her there? Who could let a child so young die? Are we the only ones mourning her? Why did she die? Why, Erik?"

He looked down at her as her hands reached to his arm yet again and tears coursed down her cheeks. "Why, Erik? Can't you tell me how such a perfect little songbird could die?"

As the pressure of her fingers worked into his sleeve he could not look at either of them anymore.

"Please, Erik…"

And then he nodded slowly in reluctant agreement, and there was a hoarseness to his voice she had never heard before as he finally spoke, "Yes, Christine… I can… I will."


	3. Calling

**Calling**

Waking the next morning was laborious for Christine. Clouds and colors of already forgotten dreams swam through headache that was combated only by the impressed sedation that lingered in the shadowy memory of Erik singing her to sleep. The darkness of her slumber had seemed heavier than usual, and as she rubbed open her eyes, it pervaded and she realized she could not see. Without any windows in Erik's underground house, the lack of natural light was absolute, and therefore, if even dimmed to the slightest, he always left at least one lamp lit for Christine's sake. But there was no light now and for a moment, Christine faintly feared there was something wrong with her eyes. She sat up, and with hesitant hands, felt for the lamp on the end table. It was still warm, but not warm enough. It felt as if it must have been turned off just recently. But why would Erik turn out the light just before she would be waking? Or had it gone out on its own? She realized it was ridiculous to consider the idea that Erik would have come into her room and turned off her light. It must have gone out on its own somehow within the past half hour or so.

She felt hesitantly about the drawer for a matchbox, but gave up after a few moments and stood to find the door. She guided herself easily to the foot of the bed, but once she let go of its banister her progress grew hesitant and unstable. She knew that she knew this room well enough to find her way to the door with her eyes closed, but the fact that the darkness she stumbled through was so mysteriously occurring made her doubtful of every step, and one after the next, they grew more and more affrightedly uncertain.

There was a sound behind her. It was as if the black air had sighed aloud, and as she whirled about to face it, she saw a glow of white flash by in her peripheral vision and then disappear.

She gasped and stumbled amid the twisted hems of her nightgown. Her back hit the wall, knocking the breath she had taken forcefully from her. Her fingers dug against the soft paper at her sides as she flattened herself to the wall, her eyes darting around the darkness, wide and useless.

"Erik?" she choked, as she tried to regain her breath. "Erik?"

Her ears strained against the echoing of the throb of her own blood, but she heard nothing more.

"Erik?"

He was not there.

Very slowly her fingers crept along the wall and felt the frame of an open door. The bathroom! She clenched the molding, her nails pressing into the wood, and after one more moment of hopeless scrutiny, she pulled with all her strength and flung herself around the corner and against the inside wall of the bathroom. She beat the panel where she knew the switch for the electric lights was mounted until she found it and the bulbs flickered awake.

Initially, she forced her eyes to remain open against the painful sudden glare, but once she saw she was alone, they squeezed shut and she swayed with visions of bright spots beneath the hand she clasped to her face. She waited until long after she could no longer feel her heartbeat in her throat before she slowly spread her hand and peeked between her fingers. The normalcy about the room seemed almost strange. She stepped away from the wall and approached the doorframe. Leaning around, she looked into the bedroom illuminated by the light from her door. Everything was quite normal.

She sighed slowly. What had she anticipated? Now that she thought of it, she did not know… But she had never been one to be rational when in the dark…

She went back into the bedroom and lit the lamp at her writing desk, and then over to light the gas of the wall lamps at the door. She dropped the match into the wastebasket and turned the doorknob. She edged the door open only as much as she needed to glance out to the parlor. Erik was nowhere to be seen.

She shut the door and turned back into the bedroom to dress.

Later, when she emerged from her room, still shaken but refreshed, Erik was waiting for her.

She offered him a small smile. "Good morning…"

"I hope you are aware of the time," he commented reproachfully.

"No…" she answered softly, glancing away from his stern look. "I did not even look… Is it late?"

He followed her surprised gaze to the large clock on the parlor wall. "Well, it is certainly no longer morning."

Her cheeks flushed with color and she looked back to him through downcast lashes. "I'm sorry… I missed our lesson."

She could imagine that he smiled beneath the mask as he offered a hand to her in a gesture to accompany him to the piano.

"You are fortunate, my dear, that when it comes to your singing, I can afford all the time in the world." He took a seat on the bench. "At any hour of the day."

Her own smile brightened, and she found her usual place at the instrument's side where he could watch her as he played.

He turned a few pages of music. "As it is, I suppose you needed the rest. You will need the energy for tonight."

She frowned in confusion. "Tonight?"

He looked up quickly from the pages. "Yes, tonight. You are singing Rachel," he reminded her.

"Tonight?" she gasped in recollection. "La Juive! Oh, but I had forgotten! Tonight!"

Erik's eyes narrowed within the hollow sockets of his mask and his fingers drummed against the top of the piano.

She pressed a hand to her mouth and spoke, her voice muffled, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry… I didn't... I… I don't even know if I'm ready…"

Erik pushed away the music on the piano stand and propped up Halevy's score. "We have four hours before you need to be upstairs. You will be ready."

And they plunged together into the sweeping romantic French melodies of La Juive. Initially, with full concentration, Christine sang out the spiritual passion of God and religion, love and betrayal, treachery and despair, but she was stopped often as Erik picked endlessly at technicalities. Time passed blindly and as she sang of Rachel's devotion to her father, soon thoughts of her dream from the night before began to wander back into her mind. She missed the warmth of her father's arms… And his gentle patience with her childish curiosity. She recalled her far milder voice lessons with him before he had died… She had mostly sung folk songs then. He sometimes called her Angel, but he had never once called her his little Songbird… _Songbird_…

Suddenly she was snapped from her thoughts as Erik slammed down the lid of the piano and stood abruptly, the bench overturning behind him.

"You are not concentrating!"

His shout made her jump more than the sharp bang of the wood had and she stepped back from the piano in stunned silence as her wide-eyed stare distinguished the volatile tension in Erik's frame.

But it was gone in another moment and the flashing in his eyes slowly dimmed to an expression of stern disappointment.

"Christine," he began again, his tone corrected to one of cool constancy, before the suspended anxiety between them became too taught. "I demand your absolute focus."

She looked away from him and sighed softly, "I'm sorry… It was just…"

"_Nothing_ must take your mind from your singing."

"I know. I'm sorry Erik…" When she looked back to him, he was already seated and scanning the music. She pressed her lips together nervously, not ready to start again. "It was just… I can't help it, Erik."

He looked up at her and she glanced away once more as she continued, "I just can't stop thinking about her… And I… I'm not myself. I was hearing things."

"…Things?"

She met the now-concerned look in his eyes and nodded. "When I awoke, it was pitch black in my room… Somehow the lamps had gone out… But then I heard a sigh."

He remained silent for another moment before speaking. "It was probably just the air… Or the gas if it was still on."

She shook her head. "No, it was off. And it was vocal, Erik. Not just like air, but very much like a voice sighing."

He glanced in the direction of her room and then slowly back to her.

She put her hands to her face again, whispering, "I'm hearing things…"

He rose from the bench and drew her away from the piano, gesturing for her to have a seat. He spoke more comfortingly then, "One imagined sigh is hardly cause for concern, Christine."

She felt very cold all of a sudden. Wrapping her arms around herself, she sank back into the soft velvet of the divan. "I saw something too. It was bright white…"

"The eyes can play tricks like that right after waking."

"But it was pitch dark in there! How could I have seen anything whether it was there or not? And it wasn't in my eyes, it was all the way across the room!"

He knelt before her and took her by the arms, pressing her back against the cushion. "Christine, calm yourself. You are becoming hysterical over nothing."

The fact that he was touching her was enough to startle her from saying anything further. She stared into his eyes and tried to cling to their steadiness to even her breathing.

"I'm sorry," she sighed again. She dropped her face into her hands. "I don't know what's come over me…I'm just… not myself."

He pulled back and rested a hand on the arm of the divan. "It could be shock," he said thoughtfully. "But more likely, it is a sort of transference. You have been under the stress that has built up of other matters and this event has triggered you to be more upset than need be and express your distress subconsciously."

She did not think she agreed with him, but she did not say so. She was not certain how much she appreciated being mentally analyzed by Erik, of all people. She glanced away from him, and her fingers absently stroked the softness of the wine colored velvet of her seat. She frowned though as the material became rough and hard under her moving touch. She looked down at it and saw the matted areas that water had left behind as it dried. Water that had dripped from a dead child. Elainie had lain here…

Erik followed her gaze and also tested the velvet with his own sensitive fingers, evaluating the damage. "It just needs to be brushed," he concluded. He stood then, turning away.

It rather upset Christine that he seemed to be more concerned with the condition of his couch than the source of its staining. She bit the insides of her cheeks and looked up at him, silent for a moment, before asking with a strange sense of authority, "How did she die, Erik?"

He turned back to her, and she could tell her question had unnerved him.

"I don't know, Christine. Not yet."

"When, Erik? You promised."

He did not answer her. He did not move at all, his hands remaining limp at his sides. And as she continued to wait for him to speak, she could only more imagine that cold, little girl lying on that cold, hard table in that cold, cold room… All alone… With nobody but Christine to care to understand the mysteries of her tragedy. Nobody…

Erik must have noticed her change in expression, for he moved to her suddenly. "Tonight, Christine."

She looked up to him again, joy and relief immediately swimming amid her unfallen tears.

"After the opera," he finished with conviction. His heart could never bear to see her so unhappy. Perhaps, he hoped, once her questions were answered, she would become herself again.

And now as he slowly turned his hand to hold it out for her, she actually smiled.

She was more at ease then, as they spent the remainder of their time together rehearsing. And when he took her back upstairs to leave her to prepare for the performance, it was only thoughts of La Juive that filled her head.

She was already dressed and the costume mistress had gone when there came a knock at her door.

"Come in," she called from her makeup table, too busy to rise.

"Flowers, madame," said the porter as he entered her room, arms filled with various bouquets.

She glanced up, surprised. "Oh! Which one is for me?"

He was going through each of the cards, unable to remember and having difficulty at the task.

She watched him for a moment, then asked, "May I help…?"

"No, no," he grunted and shifted a few from one arm to the other. "I know it's one of these."

She smiled and went back to applying her makeup.

"Ah, here we are," she heard him say. "Special delivery for Miss Christine Daaé. Where would you like them?"

"Anywhere," she said absently as she sorted through her things for a missing brush. "Thank you…" She was too occupied to look up as he left.

Only a few moments later, however, she distinctly heard voices down the hall. She looked to her door and saw that he had left it ajar. She sighed, mildly irritated, and stood to go to it. She did not blame him, of course; she knew his hands were full, and after all, she had forgotten to tip him.

As she glanced down the hall, she saw two wig mistresses turning a corner. The source of the voices, she could imagine. She began to shut the door, but before she looked away, her eyes caught sight of someone else in the corridor. A lone figure stood, half hidden in a niche, leaning against the wall. His attention also seemed to be caught by the people down the hall, but once they were out of sight, and before Christine managed to close the door completely, he turned and caught her eye.

He straightened immediately and stepped toward her. "Mademoiselle," he entreated. His voice wavered with uncertainty.

Christine's gaze fell away, but she could not bring herself to shut the door. "I am busy," she said softly.

He removed his black silk hat, stopping just before the door, looking at what he could of her through the small opening. "Please…"

She looked to him again, and when she saw the anxiety in his beseeching blue eyes, she knew she could not shut him out. She stepped back, opening the door enough to allow him inside.

He followed her with all the timidity of a boy in love, and respectfully left the door open behind him.

She sat again at her table and tried to focus on her own face in the mirror, not the fine fit of his tuxedo as he approached behind her.

"Why don't you answer my letters?" he asked softly, attempting to mask the hurt in his tone.

Her voice was barely audible. "I have nothing to say…"

He set his hat on the table and knelt beside her stool in attempt to catch her eye. "Who sent you flowers?"

She glanced down at him and then across the room. A long, but thin bouquet of half a dozen white lilies and ferns rested melodramatically across her quilted divan. She had already forgotten about them. "I don't know…"

He eyed her half dubiously for a moment and then rose and went to them. He picked them up, the paper rustling in his hands, and read the card.

"Well?" she asked, almost offended by his presumptuous action.

He looked back at her. "It's anonymous." He took a moment to inhale their fragrance, and then returned to her, handing them gently into her outstretched arms.

She found the card and read it. It was merely addressed to her and said nothing more. She met his eyes again as he returned to his knee beside her. "But they are beautiful… Are they from you?"

He thoughtfully stroked one of the long, velvety petals. "No… If I were to send you flowers, I would never send you lilies." He then looked up at her again, and a smile pulled at the corners of his lips that could have been chiseled artwork. "And I would send you flowers if I wasn't afraid you would have them returned. I would send you vase after basket of every kind of flower you could imagine."

She wanted to smile too, but she could not manage it. She leaned toward him slightly, pressing the bouquet into her lap. "Oh, Raoul… You really mustn't. And I would return them. Even if it were every flower I could imagine." But she was not even sure how seriously she took her own determination. She could so easily picture the flowers filling her dressing room… "But why wouldn't you send me lilies?"

His smile brightened infinitely as she said his name, but he only shrugged and rubbed his fingers together to remove the pollen that had caught there from the stamens. "They are a little morose, don't you think?"

She looked down at the six she held, and said softly, not really asking, "Are they?"

He studied her half painted face in silence as she seemed to quickly become lost in her own thoughts. But he knew he did not have much time and so he gently took the bouquet from her and set it on her table next to his hat. He then took her by the hand, bringing her attention back to him. "Come to dinner with me tonight… Please, Christine, just once…"

She shook her head and moved to pull her hand from his, but he would not let it go. "I can't, Raoul," she said softly, trying to be kind. "Not tonight nor any other night."

"Why?" he pleaded.

"I will be tired after the opera… I will need to go home to rest…"

"But you don't go home, Christine, you never go home."

She pressed her lips together and looked away, successfully retrieving her hand this time. "Have you been spying on me?"

He did not want to answer that question. "Just come with me for once… I promise I won't keep you late."

"No, Raoul. Not tonight. Especially not tonight."

He sighed, defeated, and did not ask again. But something about the way she had said that gave him hope for future nights. He reached to take her hand again and this time noticed the necklace wrapped about her wrist. Jealousy flared up within him once more, just as it had when the porter had knocked on her door with an armful of flowers. She was accepting gifts from someone else.

"What is this?"

She pulled her hand from him again much more forcefully than before and wrapped her other around the chain and pendant. "It's… It's not mine."

"Whose is it?"

She began to unwrap it from her wrist. "It's… It belongs to a little girl." She had almost forgotten about it and surely would have walked on stage wearing it if she had not been reminded. It would have been no crucial matter, as she was playing the part of a jeweler's daughter, but she was horrified by the idea that she could have allowed herself to possibly lose it.

Raoul's finely cut features furrowed into a frown. "What little girl?"

She cupped the necklace carefully and put it into a delicate ceramic trinket box on her table, making sure to shut the lid. "She's… Well… I found her."

Raoul took her by the arm to turn her back to him. "You found a little girl? Where? When?"

"It was… It… Yesterday…"

Raoul's confusion was almost endearing. "Where is she now?"

Christine looked from him to her mirror. "She's dead…"

Raoul leapt to his feet and went to the door, shutting it immediately. She stood to move to stop him, but only took a couple steps before he met her again.

She gasped, "She was dead when I found her, Raoul! I found her dead."

He paused warily. "Where, Christine?"

She hesitated, her voice falling again to near faintness. "In the cellars… Downstairs, in the cellars below the stage…"

"Have you told the police, Christine? We must tell the police."

"No!" she gasped again. "Not yet! Not tonight…"

"Then when, Christine? Why wait? Who knows what could have happened! How on earth—"

She seized his hands then, cutting him off. "That is why I must wait. I can't explain, but you must believe me. Tomorrow… I'll go to the police tomorrow…"

He was horribly uncertain, but there was nothing he could do. He studied the desperation on her face for a moment, deciding not to object. Besides, she had an opera to sing tonight. His eyes locked with hers as he squeezed her hands and stepped closer to her, moving to close the distance between them.

She pulled her hands from his yet again and turned away. "But you must go now… I am running out of time."

And as if on cue, there came another knock on her door and the stage manager's assistant called through, "Fifteen minutes, Miss Daaé."

"Thank you," she answered shakily as Raoul regrettably returned to the table to get his hat.

He went to the door, hesitating before taking the handle. He wanted to stall for a suitable amount of time so that the hall would be empty when he left. For both of their sakes, he did not want to be caught seen emerging from her room.

"I will see you tomorrow," he said, a note of sorrow to his voice.

She glanced at him quickly, then away again as she returned to her vanity, setting the lilies aside. "You will see me on stage in fifteen minutes."

"Yes," he sighed. "But you won't see me."

"Sometimes I can see you," she murmured as she went back to her makeup. "If the lights are not in my eyes…"

He watched her, stalling for another unneeded moment. "I will speak to you tomorrow…"

She did not answer, and he could not tell if it was deliberate or if she were merely too focused at her task. One last lingering glance, and he left the room.

On stage, the lights were in her eyes and she could not see him. But for that she decided she was glad and it was for the better. Being able to watch him watching her would have only distracted her from her performance… And she knew that once she was distracted in one capacity, she would soon find herself again thinking of the girl and not about singing. She knew Erik was watching too, though she never saw him in his box, lights or no. She did not want to disappoint him. She never wanted to disappoint him, but she was even more afraid if she did so tonight, that in retribution he would not follow through with his promise to provide her the answers she longed for to Elainie's mystery. Tonight! He would find out tonight! And try as she might, she continually found her mind wandering at crucial points in the performance.

By the time the fourth act was over, she was beginning to dread she had already ruined her chances at Erik's good graces and the fear that he would punish her with denial of what she wanted only made her suffering worse. She had spent all the intermissions absolutely alone in her dressing room, trying to meditate into focus, and in this last one, she doubled her energy with the desperate hope that she might redeem herself in the last act.

She sat with her eyes closed, her fingers rubbing her temples in slow, deliberate circles. She was humming to herself a piece of Eleazar's music that opened the next scene, and it was working very well to put her into the moment of the story. Her mind was filled with filial devotion and spiritual dedication that both tugged at her heart with love and joy, as well as began to fill her eyes with emotional tears. Music swept through her imagination and she felt lifted up to the climax of mutual martyrdom. Love of a father and love of a God would forever triumph over the betrayals of man!

But Christine's thoughts were suddenly cut off as a sharp sound penetrated her ears through her own humming. She fell silent and opened her eyes. It had sounded like high-pitched laughter. She glanced to the door to make certain it was closed. It was… How strange, she thought. No other sound had managed to distract her.

It came again. It was most certainly a joyous peal of laughter, bright and brilliant, and could only have belonged to a child. Christine was on her feet in a moment and tore open her door. The hall was empty. It ended very near her room and she moved down that way to make certain. No one was there. She then turned and went in the other direction, peering into every doorway, expecting each dark alcove to hide a mischievous child with a laugh that could make her flesh crawl. But there was no one, child nor adult. Christine wrapped her arms around herself, the rough wool of her costume itching her hands, and she began to tremble as she returned to her room.

She stepped back inside and slowly pushed the door shut behind her. But no more than a moment after the latch had clicked closed, her hair was set on end by the shrillest of screams that echoed down the corridor just outside her door.

Her now desperately shaking hand clutched at the handle, taking several tries to pull it open again. As she stumbled back into the hall, she clearly saw two young women in full costume, unrecognizable from behind, tear around the corner at the end and disappear. She could still hear one of them laughing in a very different sort of strained, nervous laughter, and before they were out of earshot, the other shrieked again:

"The ghost!"

Christine stood, frozen, in the corridor, and tried to catch her shuddering breath. Gradually she turned to glance about her, almost afraid of what she might see… But once again, she was alone.

"Erik?" she called softly, her voice thin and weak.

Silence.

"…Erik?"

He would have answered if he were there.

She turned and with slow, careful steps, once more returned to her dressing room.

He would have answered if he were there…

She left the door open behind her this time as she went in and lowered herself onto her stool. She reached to her little box and took the necklace from it, returning it to her wrist. The ceramic lid clattered frustratingly as she replaced it with a trembling hand.

"Are you ready to die?" a sharp voice called to her from the corridor.

She literally sprang from her seat and whirled about to face the door. It must have taken her almost a minute before she recognized the amused smile of the stage manager's assistant at the threshold.

"Wha—What?" she stammered.

"Act Five, Miss Daaé. The grand finale."

"Oh… Yes…"

He nodded courteously to her. "Two minutes." And then he moved on.

"Thank you…" she called after him too quietly and several moments too late. He was already gone and she was alone again.

As she left the room to make her way back to the stage, all was silent. There was no more disembodied laughter calling from the corridor to play tricks on her ears, and no ghosts in the hall to frighten the chorus girls.

Her fingers twisted the chain about her wrist in endless circles.

Erik would have answered her if he were there.

She was not herself… But those girls had been running from something. Maybe she wasn't the only one who was hearing things…


	4. Autopsy

**Autopsy**

When Erik came to collect Christine after the opera, he said not a word about her disappointing performance. In fact, he said nothing at all. And the longer Christine waited for him to voice the disapproval she knew must be brewing within him as he guided her along their lengthy journey to his home, the further she drew into herself to escape within thoughts of Elainie, and she lost complete track of cellars and lakes they passed.

Where had she come from? Had she lived near here? Did she have a family in a house nearby that was missing her? Was her mother weeping in that house at this very moment? How had she died? How had she come to Erik's lake?

Why wasn't she wearing a coat? How old was she?

"What color are her eyes?" she asked herself aloud without even realizing she had spoken the words by the time they had already entered the house.

"Blue." Erik's voice came as if from nowhere. She did not even know he had been listening.

She looked up to him quickly. "How do you…" She gasped quietly, "Did you…look?"

"No," he sighed with a hint of exasperation.

Her curiosity quickly overcame her tentativeness. "Then how do you know?"

He shrugged slightly, turning away. "Because she is blonde-haired and fair-skinned and her features are typically Aryan. It would be logical."

"Oh…" She nodded and her gaze fell to the dark hearth for a moment of silent thought before she turned back to watch him as he hung his hat. "When are you going to do it?"

He froze for a moment, his entire frame stiffening before he turned to her. "Later."

She wanted to object. He had promised he would find out tonight, he had promised after the opera he would tell her how she had died.

"Erik…"

"Go to bed," he said sharply, cutting her off.

"But…"

"You are tired. You have spent too much energy singing today. Go get your sleep, Christine."

"But…" She pressed her lips together for a moment. "You will wake me…? When you know?"

He nodded without meeting her eyes.

"Erik," she whispered, and she began to approach him.

"I promise," he snapped. But then he looked over to her where she had stopped in her tracks and his gaze softened. "If you are hungry later…"

Her eyes fell and she turned away. "Thank you," she murmured.

"Goodnight, Christine…"

She said nothing as she made her way to her room. At least he had promised… She would be able to sleep. Perhaps she had sung too much tonight with the stress that had been upon her…but for all her weariness, sleep came most easily.

And then she must have been dreaming, for when she awoke suddenly in the night, she was already shaking with the lingering chills of a cold sweat, and her heart had been fluttering so long in her throat, she felt ready to choke.

She pushed herself up in her bed, panting for breath. A nightmare? But she could remember nothing. How long had she been asleep? She passed a hand over her face and lifted her eyes. Something moved at the end of her bed. She ceased breathing altogether. Someone was down there. She could distinctly see the shape through the sheer cream of the Louis-Philippe bed curtains.

Erik! She wanted to call for Erik, but without breath, the words could not form in her throat. But it could not be Erik… Erik would not have been so white…pink and white. And Erik was not so small.

Again, the shape moved—turning, and blue eyes suddenly blinked out at Christine from a little white face under a soft mass of shimmering golden curls.

Christine began to shake again and her fingers dug into the soft down of the comforter.

"Elaine…" she gasped in a horse whisper.

The little girl at the end of the bed blinked again and curiously tilted her head, her hair falling lightly over one shoulder of the pale pink dress, and then she sighed a sigh Christine knew she had heard before.

Slowly, very slowly, Christine lifted a hand to the braided cord at the headboard and pulled it to open the curtains.

The child's eyes followed the fluttering of the material as it parted about the canopy frame, and then she looked back again to Christine.

"Am I dreaming?" Christine barely half sobbed to herself, terrified to make much sound at all. She lifted her hand and pressed it to her eyes again, but as she did, the silver charm of the miniature necklace wrapped about her wrist fell against her cheek. It was painfully cold. She gasped and jerked her hand away but only to see a frown crease the expression of the pale face that seemed to hover just above the end of her bed.

"What do you want?" Christine pleaded, tears already tracing down her cheeks.

The girl remained frozen for a moment as if Christine's words had never existed, but then she slowly lifted a finger to her rosy lips and laughed, though Christine heard no sound.

Christine said nothing then, obeying the small command, and they simply stared at each other for a lengthening, excruciating silence. Then unable to bear it a moment longer, Christine very slowly began to push away the comforter that covered her and shifted to rise.

Fear suddenly flashed across the child's face and she stepped back far enough for Christine to see her full shape beyond the bed. Christine saw then that she was wet, soaking wet and dripping all over the floor.

"No…" Christine whispered.

The girl's head snapped back and forth, frantically looking around the room, and then she turned to run for the door.

"Don't go!" Christine scrambled out of her bed, but by the time she was standing, the girl was already gone.

Instantly dizzy, she swayed on her feet, barely managing to catch herself on the nightstand before she could fall. She stayed there for a moment, panting, and then lifted a shaky hand to turn up the dim flame in the lamp to its full power.

"Don't go…" she repeated in a whisper to the silent room she dared not lift her eyes to see again. Focusing only on the warm glow of the lamp she gently fingered the chain at her wrist as she sniffed back her terrified tears for perpetual moments of the night.

Finally, after enough time to allow the vision to sink into the realm of memory, she straightened and lifted a still trembling hand to pull a shawl from the drawer in the nightstand, and then with the deepest of breaths, she turned around to face the room again. It was empty.

"Erik?" she called far too softly.

She wrapped the shawl about her shoulders and began to move forward toward the door, but so slowly…it was so far away… She would make it if she just took it step by step. Step by step by step… She froze. The carpet was wet beneath her bare foot. Her toes curled, but she did not look down, and fresh tears exploded into her eyes with a sob.

"Erik!" she cried and ran the rest of the way to the door, wrenching it open and then immediately slamming it again behind her.

The drawing room was dark. She shivered and moved quickly away from the door, wiping at her face with the corner of the shawl. Where was he? She found the door to his room locked. She knocked softly and waited, but no answer did she receive. It was too dark here. And too cold. Her wet foot felt frozen. She glanced back to the door of her room but could only shudder; she did not dare return there.

_Elainie_…What could she have wanted? Why did her laughter make no sound? Why did she tell Christine to be silent? It was as if a secret had been shared, but Christine did not know what it could be!

She was shivering uncontrollably now. Elainie had wanted something…Elainie had wanted her. _Wanted her…_

Christine was already moving in the direction of the laboratory.

When she touched the metal doorknob, its coldness nearly burned her fingers, but she did not release it.

Closing her hand around it completely, she turned it, slowly, and pushed the door open so silently she did not even know she had done it until the light from inside dazzled her eyes. She squinted, peeking in, but could see nothing of the majority of the room for the unit of shelves that blocked her view. Absolute silence. She pushed the door open further to move inside. Elainie had wanted her to come _to her_…She had called her here.

She moved around the rack of shelves and saw her then on her steel table. But the girl was no longer lying flat on her back, face to heaven. She rested on her side now, and the false image of peacefulness in sleep had been completely destroyed as matted clumps of hanging hair obscured her face and one arm was crushed uncomfortably under her little body while the other was twisted awkwardly where it had fallen over her side to rest against the cold, hard table in front of her.

It took Christine a moment to recover from the surprise of seeing her in such a position before she was even more shocked to realize that the little pink dress seemed to be unfastened, though she could not tell for certain from this side of the room, and as if it were shrugged off from the tops of her shoulders beneath the flat golden curls that hid any clear signs. Abandoned… She looked so abandoned. Abandoned and…violated.

As Christine was about to take her first steps to move toward the table, she suddenly heard a sound, and her eyes snapped to an open door in the wall behind the table she had not noticed before. She gasped and nearly dropped her shawl. At once pulling it tightly about her shivering bare arms left exposed by the sleeveless nightgown, she moved quickly to the door behind the shelves, but before she could make it back into the hall, she froze again at the distinct sound of soft footsteps and a sigh that could have only ever been Erik's.

She immediately ducked down in the corner between the rack and the side wall where the shelves were so filled with books and papers that she remained completely hidden from sight on the other side.

Clasping both hands to her mouth, she managed to keep her wild breathing silent until it slowed. The sound of a door closing. Shakily but silently turning her head, she suddenly found herself almost exactly eyelevel with the smallest of cracks between books that allowed her a surprisingly clear view of the room on the other side of the shelf. Elainie had _called_ her here…She had wanted her to _see._

She could see Erik now. His hand was still on the knob of the other door and he simply stood there, staring over at the child on the table. He was not wearing his mask. Christine could not help shuddering as she looked at him, but found the response was brought much more from the touching solemnity and reluctance in his expression than his face itself.

Neither was he wearing his evening jacket, vest or tie, merely his white dress shirt, of which one of his sleeves was rolled up above his elbow. If he knew Christine was there, he made no sign of it for his eyes that could not be seen in the brightness of the lights over the counters remained entirely fixed on Elainie even as he finally broke free of his stillness, shook his head slightly, and slowly approached the steel table.

"So," he spoke softly, and his tone was almost kind in its authority. "Christine wants to know how you died. And whatever Christine wants, Christine gets." He placed both his hands on the edge of the table, looking down at the girl from where her back was turned toward him. "We deny Christine nothing. And so, my little dear," he took one of her shoulders gently and replaced her to lie on her back, then leaned down over her ever so slightly, as he whispered the last of his sentence:

"We are going to cut you open and inspect you from the inside out."

A pause, then suddenly he straightened and moved as if to lift both hands to his face, but they halted in midair, and then he only turned and began to roll up his second sleeve as he moved to the counter.

"You should feel honored," he spoke with his back to her now. "I've never done this before." He took up a pair of long sharp scissors from a tray on the counter and turned back to face the table. "You are my first child corpse."

He tilted his head, studying the tiny body for a moment before setting the scissors down next to her head in order to take the table by its edge and pull it on its metal wheels closer to the counter. Then he moved to retrieve the scissors, but stopped before touching them and instead lifted his hand to Elainie's little round face and lightly touched her eyelids. After a moment of hesitation, very gently with two fingers, he pulled open her eye to glance at it only briefly before he closed it again and said almost too softly to be heard:

"Well...Won't Christine be pleased…"

He finally took up the scissors again, slipping his fingers through its handles and with his other hand, he lifted the bottom edge of the pink dress. But then once more pausing in mid-action, the focus of his gaze shifted thoughtfully to a distant point across the room.

If he had been looking anywhere near where Christine hid, she was certain at that moment she would have fainted dead away.

Erik shook his head again as if to clear his mind, and he looked back down to the little girl to say still softly though more distinctly, "But I feel much better now."

Then finally with abrupt surgical precision, the scissors sliced away the little pink dress and its petticoats all at once. Moving the body as little as needed, he set the cloth aside and Elainie was left wearing nothing more than her little black boots and woolen winter leggings, her thin, pale, white chest quite suddenly completely exposed to the cold.

Erik took his time to put the scissors away before turning to look back at her again.

"So young…" He shook his head slowly. "So small…"

He lifted her gently then with his bare hands and began to carefully inspect her newly exposed flesh.

"Only one bruise," he said the way a normal doctor might have spoken to a living child as he returned her to lie on her back when he had finished. "Did you fall?"

He brushed off his hands and took a step back toward the counter.

"Christine does not believe that you drowned." He turned to his tray. "And it is usually quite simple to get Christine to believe what we want her to believe, isn't it?"

Christine's hands over her mouth had relaxed and she lowered them slowly. Her anticipation remained great, but the continuing conversational tone of Erik's unanswered words had a strangely comforting effect on her, even considering to whom they were addressed… And for a few moments the only sounds were the faint clinks of metal objects on the tray she could not see.

Then he turned back to the table again and every light in the room suddenly reflected fiercely off the steel of the surgical knife he now held.

Christine's comfort vanished.

"You are very small," he said to the child. "And so I am going to use a very small scalpel. Don't worry. You won't feel a thing."

And then turning the knife in his hand, he leaned over the body, inserted it into girl's flesh and cleanly slit her open from collar to stomach just above the waistband of her woolens.

Christine's entire body spasmed and her hands gripped more violently than ever over her mouth and nose to keep the sudden sobs that ached to join her breaths at bay, but she dared not look away!

After making a couple crosswise cuts in the girl's tiny torso, Erik had put the bloodied scalpel aside and now used his bare hands to slowly open up Elainie's little ribcage.

From her lowered angle and due to the narrowness of her field of vision, Christine could see nothing of what Erik saw within the opened cavern of the child's body, but the dark blood that stained his hands as he withdrew them conjured more graphic images than she could have ever happened to observe in any medical representation. And she was certain her shaking should have rattled the shelves, but she quickly became so numbly frozen, the safety of her stillness could only mock at her in its irony of her lack of ability to escape the sights.

"Now let us see if you did indeed drown," Erik said as he wiped his hands with a towel. "And perhaps all this business will be over before we know it."

He took a different knife from his tray and returned to the opened corpse. Christine did not know what he could have possibly been doing in there with such slight movements of his wrist, but just as quickly as he had descended, she saw his fingers lift again, just enough for her to make out the shape he held. A pale and sticky red organ, small in the white spider of his hand—one of the child's lungs. It was visible to her only with the slight movements of his hand, there one moment, then out of sight the next, then back again, and he lifted the knife to it, slicing it open slowly. That was the last she saw of it. Her frozen fingers had finally, finally managed to creep their way up to cover her eyes with the edges of her shawl.

She heard him speak again, but it sounded so much further away:

"Interesting…" A soft sigh. "What then, my dear?" Metal touched metal. "We need an answer."

Christine choked and her hands returned to cover her mouth. Her eyes open again, she could so suddenly clearly see, through that tiniest of cracks between the books and from all the way across the room, Erik was now staring directly at her. It did not last long. Not long at all before his eyes returned to his project, but it was long enough. She was shaking again and if the shelves did not soon begin to rattle, she was certain he could have clearly heard the crashing pounding of her heart.

"The heart," he said simply.

Christine jumped. She knew she had made a sound, but Erik did not look back to her and he continued to speak. She saw him lift his knife again.

"It is full of answers."

And then with a swiftly deliberate motion of the blade, Elainie's heart was in his hand. He set it gently in a metal tray and took up the towel again.

He said nothing for a long silence that screamed in each of Christine's ears as he simply stared at the little red and black organ on the cold silver tray. Then he shook his head again, put the towel aside, and said:

"So small…"

He turned and went to the door near him. Christine did not know why and did not want know why he would go back into that second room, what device it could possibly contain that he would need to examine a child's heart, but the moment he had passed through the door, she was on her feet and groping along the wall until she made her way back into the hall on completely numbed bare feet, chills devouring the bare flesh of her arms. She managed only just barely to close the laboratory door behind her before she could contain her gagging sobs no longer, and scrambling through the dark, she raced back to her own room.

She shut the door, she turned down the lamp, she got in bed, but she could not sleep. She gasped deeply into her pillows for what must have been almost ten minutes, shivering in frozen cold where she hid curled under the heavy down of her comforter, and she had only just barely begun to calm when she heard the sound of the turning of the handle of her door.

She stopped breathing. Freezing completely, her eyes squeezed shut where her face was concealed between comforter and pillows.

Silence…Silence…Silence…She heard the door close again.

She exhaled slowly, as quietly as possible, but still she waited—Oh, how long she waited, and her stillness eventually became trembling again, but she did not sleep. And after longer silence than she could ever withstand, her eyes slowly pried themselves open, and she managed the strength to turn her face just enough to take in the room… He was not there. Nothing was there. Except for her shawl, which had been folded neatly and left for her on the nightstand under the soft glow of the lamp.


	5. Haunted

**Haunted **

Christine had no memory of having allowed herself to fall asleep, but before the fog of countless hours of unconsciousness had even halfway begun to dissipate, she was suddenly startled into full awareness by the pervasive resonance of Erik's voice:

"I'd begun to fear you would never wake."

Heaving herself up, she turned sharply in her bed to see him sitting in the chair near the nightstand.

He tilted his head slightly, gentle concern filling his gaze. "You'd been sleeping so long…"

She was shaking with sudden chills, and her fingertips dug into the comforter where her hands clenched at its edge. Fully dressed and wearing his mask, he seemed nothing as she so clearly recalled from the night before, but she could not prevent the widening of her eyes as she took him in.

He leaned forward where he sat and rested his elbows on the ends of the chair's arms. Unmistakable sternness crept into his tone, "Christine."

She gasped and scrambled back against her pillows to the other side of her bed.

He remained frozen for a moment as he stared at her in surprise, then he sighed and sank slowly back into the chair.

"More nightmares?" he asked, his voice soft again.

She glanced back to him. "I…" And then as she gaped at him, she realized that his attitude towards her at least appeared to have no reflection at all of the night before. In fact, he appeared hurt by her reaction…As if he did not know why she should fear his presence.

Her grip on the comforter slowly loosened and her gaze fell.

"No…" she breathed, and she shook her head. Or had it all been a nightmare afterall?

Erik remained silently observant as she took her time to let slow the insanity that had become of her heartbeat before she spoke again.

"How long was I asleep?" she finally asked in quiet tenseness.

"Too long," he answered gently.

She lifted her face to look across to him once more. "You were worried about me?"

He leaned toward her again just a little, studying the clarity of her eyes closely. "I think you should stay in bed today."

She stared at him for a moment, then nodded slowly. "I…I'm not myself…"

He did not move other than to return her nod, but then after a few moments of silent examination, he stood and stepped away from the chair.

Her gaze followed his movements. "I'm hungry," she whispered.

He glanced back down at her. "Good."

And then she thought, if she could have seen his face, he might have smiled at her before bowing to her politely and leaving the room with the unspoken promise to prepare something for her to eat.

He did not shut the door after himself, and Christine did not move to rise from bed. Relaxing more, she smoothed the twisted covers and laid back again to glance about the room. It appeared so strangely normal to her now…Lovely and old-fashioned in the charming brightness of the gaslights…Certainly not apparently welcoming to any ghosts of dark and fearful imagination. She closed her eyes then and did all she could to empty her mind of memories of the night while she waited until Erik returned.

What he brought to her, she ate in bed, and even after she'd finished and had begun to feel much more at ease in the atmosphere of regained normalcy, he insisted that she remain in bed for the day.

"I'll let you rest," he said, moving to clear from the room the utensils that had been set aside.

"Erik," she began softly.

He paused and turned back to her, and the tenderness in his gaze was so inviting that she finally found it impossible to any more associate the attentive gentleman before her now with the mad scientist of the previous night…

"Stay with me?"

As she spoke, he seemed to forget what he had been about to do and returned to the bedside, standing over her.

"I feel restless," she confessed.

"Rest Christine," he insisted with gentle firmness.

She nodded. "But don't leave me alone…Not in here alone…"

And so Erik, who truly could never manage the power to deny Christine anything at all, remained with her in her bedroom for all that was left of the day. That night, he gave her a draught so that she would sleep deeply and completely free of all the nightmares of both dreams and reality.

When Christine awoke the next morning, she found herself alone but strangely at peace, and by the time she emerged into the drawing room, ready for the day, she was feeling more herself than she had in days.

Erik had been waiting for her. "You have a rehearsal today."

Her eyes found him where he stood near the mantle.

"I do?" she asked, truly confused.

He began to move toward her. "The new production will be blocked entirely."

"Oh…" She frowned slightly and wondered if it were possible she had been away from the Opera for more than two nights and a day.

Before she could ask, Erik spoke again as he stopped to stand just before her:

"If you do not feel well enough to go, I would rather you remained in bed."

She tilted her head up to meet his eyes as they studied her features closely.

"I feel fine," she said perhaps too softly to be entirely believable.

He stepped back then, though he continued to regard her thoughtfully, and he seemed as if he might comment on her tone, but then, perhaps deciding it best to leave certain matters unspoken while they may, he turned away.

"I want to go, Erik."

"Yes, Christine. I suppose you have rested long enough."

She offered him a smile, but he did not turn to notice it. And then as a contemplative silence began to stretch on between them, slowly wakening thoughts of Elainie wormed their way back into Christine's mind…The other night…Erik had done what it had taken to find out how the little girl had died…

"Erik…" she began tentatively.

He turned about to face her quickly. As if he knew just what she intended to ask.

"It is time we left," he said brusquely. "You are already late."

Christine took a small step back…And then she only nodded quietly in assent.

It was not until she was entirely without Erik's presence after he had left her in her dressing room that haunted anxiety of the previous days reinstated nervous apprehension to her shivering frame. She did not want to be alone. It was cold in her dressing room (though not as frigid as the air in Erik's house had lately become), and the bouquet of white lilies that she had forgotten the other night had already begun to die.

She opened her door to look out into the hall. Empty silence.

"I am late. Everyone is already at rehearsal…" The soft sound of her own voice gave her comfort and quickly, she made her way to the stage.

It was through the wearing work at rehearsal that Christine fully realized she was still not quite herself after all. Though she managed well enough, her effort was noticeably not up to standard and she found her thoughts drifting so often that she missed several cues and nearly jumped out of her skin as her name was called more than one time. Her apologies were accepted with the excuse of having been under the weather, but the moment the break for lunch was announced, she found herself dashing for the wings in drained frustration.

"Mademoiselle!"

She stopped, turning to face the voice that caught her attention and was momentarily stunned to see the Vicomte de Chagny in the doorway that led to a backstage hall.

"Monsieur…" she managed after another moment, looking askance at a small group of people that emerged from the wings in the direction of the door.

The Vicomte was silent as he stepped aside to allow them to pass, then he turned to face Christine again and approached her.

"May I speak with you…for a few moments?"

She continued to watch the group until all were out of sight, but even then she did not return her eyes to look at him. She pressed her lips together in a moment of hesitation then nodded, saying softly, "We have just been released for the hour."

He stopped as he reached her and lowered his voice to a whisper. "Perhaps in private?"

She shook her head with clear certainty. "Here."

His eyes remained fixed on her uncompromising expression for a moment of hopeful silence, then he lifted his gaze to glance about the backstage area and found that, at the moment, they happened to be alone.

"I tried to find you yesterday." He kept his voice low.

She lowered her gaze. "I…I wasn't here. I wasn't feeling well."

He paused for only a moment, then asked directly, "Have you spoken to the police?"

Her eyes snapped back to look at him. "The police?"

"Christine," his voice was hushed again and he stepped closer to her. "We must tell the police…We cannot keep this silent."

She tried to turn away from him, but he caught her with gentle firmness by the arm.

"You said you found her already dead, Christine…but if there is something you are not telling me…"

She shook her head quickly, turning back to him fully, and even as close as she was to him now, her voice was barely audible. "No, Raoul, she was dead when I found her…when I found her in the cellars… but…" She shook her head again. "I was wrong. We cannot tell the police. You must not tell anyone I've told you this, Raoul!"

And she could not contain a spasmodic shudder as the vivid images of the little girl being sliced open and pulled apart flooded her memory with sudden violent force.

Raoul took her by both arms then in sudden concern as she instantly paled several shades before him.

"No!" she gasped. "No one must know…Please, Raoul, promise me!"

"Why?" he whispered as he leaned closer to her, attempting to keep her still with his supportive grip. "Christine, tell me what has happened."

She lifted her hands to her face and tried to shake her head free of the remembered images. "We can't," she whimpered. "She's…she's not the same anymore…She's…she's gone, Raoul."

He took her wrists with his gloved hands, very gently removing them from her face so he could clearly see her now tear-filled eyes. "What do you mean?" his whisper still sensitive though urgent.

"I…She…" Christine adverted her eyes. "I lost her…"

Her voice was so low then that Raoul did not hear her words.

"Christine?" he promoted, pressing her hands.

"I lost her," she hissed a hush more audibly and her eyes returned to meet his.

It was then, at the same moment, that they each heard someone approach from the direction of the stage. Raoul immediately released Christine's hands and took a step away from her as she hastily wiped at her tears, but the effort proved needless as whoever had made the sound did not appear. They breathed together in silence for a few uncertain moments, and then Christine turned to face Raoul again, extending a hand to him.

He took it at once, pressing an ardent kiss to its back as she spoke.

"Please, Raoul, don't ask me any more…I…I cannot explain. Please…Please forget all of this I've told you."

He folded his other hand over hers he held and stepped to her again. Concern for her emotional reaction had knitted his handsome brow into an expression of dear and sympathetic anxiety.

"Christine, you would tell me...If there was something else, you would tell me? For your own safety..."

She nodded quickly, but again her eyes could not meet his.

"Then I will ask no more of you about it...Unless you tell me." He pressed her hand between his once more before releasing it and putting his fingertips lightly to her face. "I never meant to upset you so. I was only thinking...Thinking of..."

"I know," she cut off his words before he could finish and turned her face away from the smooth material of his glove, moving to grant yet a little more space between them.

"Let me make it up to you?" Though his voice was still soft, he was no longer whispering.

She glanced back to him.

"Let me take you to lunch." He managed a smile.

She sighed and began apologetically, "I don't have time..."

"You have the hour," he offered, keeping his tone light.

She shook her head and kept her eyes downcast. "Thank you, but I would like to be alone just now."

He nodded silently and turned his own eyes away, also taking a step back. "Then I shall let you alone." After a moment of hesitation he added, "If you have anything else to tell me, you know how to reach me…Day or night, Christine."

"Good day, Monsieur," was all she offered, and she did not look up again until she was certain he was gone. Truthfully, the last thing she wanted just now was to be alone, and as she looked about she shivered to find herself now very alone in the dark and cavernous backstage area. Raoul had closed the door to the hall and the only light was that which filtered back from the auditorium between flats, set pieces and curtains.

Something moved behind her.

She whirled about quickly and gasped, "Who's there?"

Silence. Then a soft female voice responded through the darkness, "Christine Daaé?"

"Who?" she asked again all the more desperately as her heartbeat seemed ready to choke her.

Laughter. Bright and childish and enough to send chills down her spine.

"Don't be afraid," the voice came again.

Christine began to back toward the hall door. "I…" she stammered, barely able to breathe. She felt lightheaded and her vision began to swim before her.

But then, through it, she saw a young woman push aside a black curtain and emerge finally into sight. Christine at once recognized her as one of the girls her own age with whom she used to sing featured parts before Erik had begun to procure her the leading roles. Her immediate relief was so great, that she could not even speak, and she sank back against the wall by the door.

The girl laughed again. "Oh, don't look so terrified! I promise I won't tell a soul that you were back here alone in a dark corner with the Vicomte de Chagny." She smiled brightly as she moved around the prop table and approached Christine. If anything, Christine could gather that she seemed absolutely thrilled to be a part of such a secret.

"I'm…I'm not afraid." Christine straightened slowly. "But thank you…"

The girl opened the door while continuing to keep her focus on Christine. "Are you going to the café?"

Christine nodded, and after taking a moment to make certain her limbs were no longer shaking, she moved to accompany her out the door.

"Though if I were the one who had the Vicomte whispering sweet nothings to me in a dark corner," the girl continued, keeping her voice respectfully low as they walked together down the hall, "I certainly wouldn't mind the whole company knowing." She put a hand to her lips to stifle another childish giggle.

Christine managed a smile, but made no effort to make conversation as they made their way to the café. Once there, however, she accepted invitation to lunch with her travel companion at a table where already seated were a few other women singers she knew but ordinarily would not have thought to have joined. She was certain she would have joined anyone just now to avoid being alone.

"Christine Daaé," someone spoke up to catch her attention, "Have you met Jacqueline Galerne? She is new to the chorus."

Startled, Christine looked up from the light lunch she had ordered but for which she had found no appetite, to be introduced to a pale, dark haired girl, perhaps a couple years younger than she, who was seated across the table from her.

Someone laughed. "Christine Daaé, you have been on the edge of your nerves all day."

"It is a pleasure to meet you," Jacqueline said softly. "I have read so much about you lately in the papers' reviews."

Christine offered her what she could of a smile and responded politely before returning her attention to the food she had barely touched. She found it incredibly hard to focus on cheerful conversation when every one of her thoughts were haunted by the ghost of a dead child…Elainie's blue eyes blinked out at her from each flash of light through the café windows and her pink dress fluttered in each gust of breeze that caressed the curtains…

"Miss Daaé has been managing to astound us anew almost every day," someone near Jacqueline joined the conversation.

"Although today she can't seem to keep her mind on the opera," the woman sitting next to Christine teased as she patted Christine's arm gently.

Another stifled giggle from the girl who had found her backstage. "I don't blame her!" And then several prolonged moments of hushing curious inquiries as with beaming pride, she denied the secret she kept.

"You're always so mysterious, Christine," someone said in benign frustration at the unanswered questions. "Usually new stars can't wait to share the stories of their success. That's why they say it's supernatural with you."

"Supernatural?" Jacqueline asked the speaker.

"Didn't you say you'd read the papers?"

"But there is no such thing," the new girl said firmly in the natural softness of her voice. "Not really."

"There is so," someone else spoke up. "Not with Christine Daaé, but there is."

Jacqueline laughed lightly, "Always so superstitious in the theatre."

"_This_ theatre happens to be haunted."

Christine dropped her fork, her eyes snapping up to the faces around her. "Haunted?"

The girl who had spoken pursed her small red lips together. "Yes, of course. You don't believe either? I would have thought of all people, Christine Daaé, you would not be surprised."

"Every theatre is haunted," someone laughed.

The woman sitting next to Christine turned to her in startled concern as she'd begun to tremble, and she laughed comfortingly, "Don't let their talk put a fear of ghosts into you."

"Ghosts aren't real," Jacqueline nodded.

"They are so," the girl sitting next to her, across the table from Christine began. "_This _one is. I heard a voice!"

Christine was on her feet immediately and nearly upset a glass of water as she reached across to grip the girl's arm fiercely. "What did she say?" she gasped, her voice hoarse in sudden terror.

A moment of shocked silence as all eyes turned to Christine…And then a ripple of tense and gentle laugher made its way down the table.

The girl she gripped lifted a hand to pat Christine's fingers comfortingly as she said with somewhat strained lightness, "The Opera Ghost is a _he_, silly."

Christine stared at her for a moment, before she glanced at all the others who continued to stare back at her. She blushed then and her hand relaxed, releasing the girl's arm, and she moved back slowly into her seat. "The Ghost…"

"Well, I don't believe in ghosts," Jacqueline reaffirmed with an amused smile that was shared by most at the table.

"Neither do I," someone else added.

"I never did," Christine said softly as she found her fork again. And it was true. She had never believed in ghosts…not before now.

She found it impossible then to focus on anything that was left of the group's conversation for the remainder of the lunch, and so on, her lack of concentration for the second half of the afternoon's rehearsal was unforgivable. How she hoped Erik was not watching. How she prayed he did not know it was thoughts of _ghosts_ that filled her mind.

If he'd known at all, he said nothing of it as he brought her back to his home that evening. When he did comment on her distant state, she confessed she probably should have stayed in bed for another day as he had suggested. And then he'd nodded in agreement but also duly lectured her on the consequences letting anything, anything at all take her mind from her singing. The strictness of his tone had made her wonder if he had perhaps witnessed her exchange with Raoul…But she did not dare ask.

As the quiet evening they afterward shared wore on, left to her own thoughts as Erik read from a large medical reference book in his chair by the dark fireplace, Christine found the idea of _ghosts _becoming less and less alien to her mind. What had she seen the other night in her room? Surely she had seen it…Seen _her._ She knew she could not have been dreaming. She was certain of that. Every theatre was haunted…Was that true? Every Opera House had a ghost. That's what they'd always said.

"The Phantom of the Opera…" she whispered.

Erik looked up from the heavy volume he was reading and over to Christine. "Yes?"

She jumped where she'd been sitting on the carpet in thought, startled by his answer, and looked back to him, shaking her head. "No, not you."

He closed the book and set it aside. "Is there another?"

A moment of shy uncertainty, and then she moved over to sit at the base of his chair, leaning up to put her hands on its thick arm. "Erik, do you believe in ghosts?"

"Real ones?"

She nodded.

He laughed.

"Erik…" she frowned disappointedly.

"Like angels?" he asked.

She released the chair's arm and turned, sinking to sit with her back to its side. "I don't believe in ghosts," she insisted too weakly to be believed.

Erik turned where he sat to look down at her. "Would you like something more to help you sleep tonight?" he offered kindly.

"You laughed at me," she murmured.

He lowered himself from the chair to kneel before her so that their eyes were level. "Forgive me…"

She lifted her gaze to meet his, but said nothing.

He waited for only one more moment before standing and offering her his hand. "Come, it is too cold in here now to be sitting on the floor."

She accepted it and stood. She was very cold.

"If you'd like another blanket tonight…" he began.

"Erik," she said with sudden uncharacteristic sternness. "How did she die?"

He turned away from her.

She stepped after him. "You promised you would tell me."

"I don't know yet," he sighed as if he'd hoped she had forgotten altogether.

"But…Didn't you…?"

"Yes," he all but snapped, sudden disgust unmistakable in tone. "But I didn't finish. It was not as simple as I'd anticipated. I…" He turned sharply back to face her. "You were right, Christine. She did not drown."

Tears were already pooling in Christine's eyes. "Then how…How… Who could ever let her die? She's so young…So pure…She…"

Erik's tone softened. "I will find out, Christine."

She reached to take his sleeve. "Let me see her…"

He began to shake his head.

"Please," she begged. "Before…before you…finish with her."

He stared down at her for a very long moment, and then he looked away and gently pulled his sleeve from her grasp, turning to lead her to the laboratory.

The moment they entered the room, Christine began to shiver uncontrollably although she had been dressed warmly all evening. Erik removed his suit jacked and draped it about her shoulders as they walked together around the shelves into the main part of the room.

"We have been four days without heat now," he explained. "The air in the house is finally reaching the actual underground temperature…" He followed Christine's gaze to the corpse on the steel table, adding flatly, "It is the principal reason why she has yet to begin to smell of decay."

Elainie lay still on her back, her entire body covered to the neck by a clean, white sheet. And Erik was right, there was no stench of decay…However there was another odor that permeated the air…That faint but distinct smell of chemicals that could have quite easily been masking any smell of death. She studied the body now as if she knew this would be the last time she would see it. Only her face was visible and, if Christine chose to ignore how sunken the area about the eyes and had become and how blue the lips had grown, she could imagine that the girl was still nothing less than a living child tucked away to sleep. But Christine knew what was under that sheet…Oh, how she knew.

She said nothing. Just stared in silence for far too long. And ever observant, the moment her gaze drifted from the present into thought, Erik took her by the shoulder and led her from the room.

Once in the hall, she shrugged off his jacket and held it out without turning back to look at him. "Please…" she whispered. "Please…I must know."

Erik took the jacket from her but said nothing.

She nodded slowly, and then, wrapping her arms tightly about herself, she started for her room in an exhausted and numbed daze, not once looking back to say goodbye.

She would not need a drought to sleep tonight.


	6. Running

**Running **

It was dark, but not yet late, and so her father had allowed Christine to run off to play in those windswept summer grasses of the fields with her promise that she would not dirty her new dress.

The laughter of the other children long filled the moonlight, but in her pursuit of grasshoppers, Christine must have strayed from the group, for it faded, and she soon found herself quite alone and quite near to the woods. There were fireflies here. She stopped running and stood still to marvel at them as they poured out from amongst the trees and speckled the silver night with their tiny golden lights.

"Fairies…" she whispered. Where there were fireflies, there were bound to be fairies! If she did not move, they would not know she was there, and they would appear to dance before her.

The tickling grasses brushed at her bare legs. The wind was coming from the forest. It bit her cheeks and made her long for the bonfire, but she remained still. If she waited, they would come. A grasshopper leapt across her feet. She looked down. She was barefoot and the grasshopper was gone.

The longer she waited, the more fireflies emerged from the woods to encompass her in the night. They were thickening. One flew so close to her face that she saw its little body clearly, illuminated by its own flashing light. She gasped and took a step back, but the swarm had become just as dense behind her now. So many lights—zipping and spinning and surrounding her so completely beyond and above that she could no longer find the moon. How would she ever be able to see the fairies?

She stepped forward, reaching out to part the curtains of light with her hands, but there was no end to it. Faster and faster she moved, but the throng was limitless. And that was when she heard it:

"_Songbird_," the hollow voice of the wind blew through the lights, stirring them softly.

She froze. The flashes were so many now that they had become a single mass of fire, burning and pillaring to the sky, and she was in the middle of it—at the center of the bonfire.

"_Songbird_," the wind came again and the flames parted slightly at their breath.

She reached out to the open space. The wind was cold and the fire did not like it. She could escape this way.

"I hear you," she whispered to it. "I hear you calling me."

"_Songbird_," the voice rose once more, and the cold arms of the wind enfolded her like an angel's and drew her out through the blazing light.

"I'm coming!" she gasped. "I can feel you!"

And then it was dark again. The fire was gone and the white moon rippled in the black sky as if it were only a reflection of itself.

It was summer, but now she was shivering. His embrace had chilled her to the bone. She turned to look up at him and he was just as she remembered he would be: Absolutely immobile save for the billowing of his blackness in that wind and the glinting of the silver of his blade.

"I know who you are," she whispered.

He moved! He looked down to her with those glowing eyes that were held by no sockets, with that face that was made of nothing but the darkness.

"Who am I?" His voice surrounded her and filled her. It was more than the wind now; it was the night.

She felt very small. She was smaller than she should have been. Shouldn't she have been taller? Shouldn't she have been able to reach his face?

"You are an angel," she breathed. "Papa said there would be angels in France."

He appeared to be frozen again then, but she knew he was not, for she could see his fingers tighten about the staff of his blade.

"Do you know who I am?" she asked him timidly.

The black of his robes swelled and sank with silent breaths. "You are my little songbird," he spoke again.

"Aren't you an angel?" she asked, more frightened now.

He turned from her then. "I suppose I am, in a way."

She took a step after him. "Have you come for me?"

"You wanted me."

"You saved me from the fire." The distance between them was growing. "Don't go," she pleaded, and she reached out to him.

He turned to her and extended his free hand. Every bone in it was pure white. "I have something to show you," he whispered, and his voice was beautiful enough to be an angel's.

"I am frightened," she said as she took his hand.

He clasped it gently and began to lead her through the trees. "There is no fear here."

"The forest? It's so far away…" But they were already deeply within it.

"There is a stream here," he continued. "It begins in the earth, it flows down the slope, and it becomes a lake."

"Papa told me I was safe…"

"A vast, dark lake where daylight never reaches."

"I don't want to see the lake," she whimpered softly, and she tried to pull her hand from his, but it was held fast.

"My little songbird," he stopped and turned to her. "Don't you see we have already reached the stream?"

And so they had. It was beautiful and surrounded by lush moss and delicate blossoms. Ivy hung from the trees at its banks and rogue snatches of moonlight skipped across its running, rolling rivulets between stones. The water was not very deep, but she was so small that it did not need to be.

She gasped in awe and clasped her hands together. He must have let hers go.

"But…but there is no sound." She could not tear her eyes from the sight, but she heard the rustle of his movement at her side. "The water is moving but it makes no sound."

"I can change that for you." He extended his staff over the edge of the bank. "Would you like that? My little songbird?"

She nodded and the sound began—A trickle at first, a mere drip-drop, but it soon became a lapping which passed into a gurgling that turned to running which grew into a rushing that culminated at a roaring.

"It's too loud!" she gasped, barely hearing her own voice over the water's. "It's running too slowly, too softly to be that loud!"

"Oh, but it is not moving at all."

And as she looked, she saw that he was right. The water had become frozen—not as ice, but as a painting of a river—motionless in time.

She was frightened again. "Why…How…How can something so still make so much noise?" The edge of the bank felt slippery and cold under her bare feet.

"Why…" The voice of the wind blew through her again with iced needles that pricked her inside and out, and even it was barely audible over the running of the water. "Why don't you ask it!" And then she felt his hand of bone press against her back.

She screamed!

But it was no child's scream. It was her own scream, and once again Christine found herself shocked awake in her own bed in the Louis-Philippe room and trembling through the cold grip of those too-real remnants of her nightmare.

The running of the water continued to echo in her ears and as she panted to catch her breath, she pushed herself up from the pillows with utter terror at what sight might greet her.

The room was empty…normal… Safe, and lit comfortably by the usual and familiar glow of the low night lamps. Bombarded with lightheadedness by the sheer relief of it, she collapsed back against the pillows and put a cold hand to her clammy forehead. The pendant of the necklace around her wrist brushed her cheek. It was warm. She pulled her hand away and looked at the little engraved silver heart as it twirled back and forth gently in the air. …Songbird…Elainie…Songbird…Elainie…_Songbird…_

The sound of running water would not leave her ears. She pushed herself up in the bed again and shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to set her mind free. It would not cease. She pressed her hands over her ears and only then did it finally fade. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then opened them again before slowly lowering her hands. The moment she did, the sound returned. She realized then that it was not within her mind; it was without it.

"Running…running…" she murmured, and her eyes found the open door to the bath across the room. The sound was coming from the darkness beyond that doorway.

She pushed back the covers and rose. Had she forgotten to turn off the faucet? If the tap had been running all while she slept, that would explain her strange dream, wouldn't it? She turned up the lamp on the nightstand, then began to cross the room. But how could she have left the water running without remembering it? She stopped halfway across the room.

"Erik?" she called softly.

All was silent save for that gentle running of the water. He wouldn't have been in there in the dark anyway.

She took a few more steps and wracked her brain in attempt to recall if she might have left the faucet open…or if she remembered distinctly closing it. But she recalled neither; her preparation for bed was a dazed blur to her now just as it had been at the time… Could she have been so distracted in her state that she had left the water running?

She gasped and stopped suddenly just outside of the doorway as her bare foot sloshed into a thickly soaked area of the carpet. The bathroom must have flooded! The water was icy cold. It took her several moments to catch her breath before she was able to let her other foot join the first, but even as she stepped into the wet plush gingerly, she gasped again. Pinpricks of shock ran up her legs and her shivering became uncontrollable. She moved quickly the last couple steps to the doorframe and reached in to turn on the electric lights.

They flickered to life, revealing the elegant bathroom to her in all its normalcy save for the pool of clear water centimeters deep that sloshed into every corner of the room and lapped out the door to soak into the lush carpet about her toes.

Although she stepped in carefully, she found the hard floor beneath the water very slippery and so she kept a hand at the wall. The noise in the windowless room echoed about the marble into the illusion of a roaring that was far too loud for the small faucets of the bathtub…That large, opulent bathtub, which stood before her now overflowing like a fountain gone mad.

Not releasing the wall until absolutely necessary, she made her way across to it with perhaps not enough caution, and she wrenched the knobs of the faucets closed. The silence was immediate and the only remaining sound, the soft lapping of the pool against the marble, she found almost lulling. She clenched her teeth against their chattering and, very slowly releasing the knob to find her balance, she looked down into the bathtub. She froze so suddenly that even her shivering stopped.

There was something in there. Something floating just below the surface of the water that still trickled over the tub's edge. Something white. Something pink and white.

A billowing sheet of fabric slowly became still as the rippling of the water died, and as the movement ceased, Christine could begin to see that it was wrapped about something.

She stepped forward and put her hands on the edge of the tub. She leaned toward the water…peering down at the twisted white sheet…White…white…white…pink!

"No!" she choked, and she plunged her hands into the water, grasping at sheet and the hard shape beneath it.

"Elainie! No! Not again!"

Christine pulled the body up above the surface and tore the sheet away from the little girl's dead face.

"No," she sobbed. "Not again…No...no…no…"

She knelt at the side of the tub and wrapped her arms around Elainie, cradling her drowned form the best she could with the side of the tub between them.

She pressed her cheek against the top of the little girl's head, strands of the soaked hair tickling her nose as she wept for the child.

"I'm sorry…I'm sorry," Christine gasped. "I should have turned off the water…I'm sorry…"

She pulled back slightly to wipe the tears from her own face with one hand and Elainie's head fell back against her other arm, leaving the girl's small pink mouth to drop open. Christine stared down at her for a shaking silent moment, then very slowly lifted her fingers to the girl's jaw to press it closed again. It would not move. Christine pressed a little harder, but the girl's body was so stiff…So stiff and dead. Christine withdrew her hand and it trembled with new intensity.

When she looked back down at the white sheet, she saw then that it was no longer white. It had become spotted with red. Christine's eyes widened and her arm that still held the body aloft began to shake so much that it caused the water in the tub to splash out over the edge and onto her lap where she knelt. The red spots spread and grew.

"No…" she whispered, too shocked to pull away as the blood seeped through the white sheet and spiraled across the turbulent surface of the bathwater.

Christine knew this white sheet. This was Erik's sheet. This was the sheet she had seen over Elainie's body in the laboratory. Christine knew what was under that sheet!

She gasped and choked again. Water splashed into her eyes. "No…" she moaned as the horror convulsed through her that this body she held was the very body that should be lying on Erik's table. Christine could not even close her eyes to shut out the sight and they found the child's face again. Elainie's eyes were open too. Elainie's blue eyes were open just as wide as her twisted, gaping mouth.

Christine screamed and threw up both of her arms over her head. The girl's small shape fell back into the bathwater with a freezing splash that coated Christine in numbing spasms.

She pushed herself up from the side of the bathtub, stumbling back on the slippery floor, frigid water splashing about her ankles and seizing at her calves. She wanted to scream again, she wanted to call for Erik, but she was shivering too violently and her throat too was seized by the grip of terror. Slipping again, she grabbed hold of the commode to keep from falling into the water, and her fingers clenched at its hard edges as she gasped and gasped to catch her breath.

The white sheet that had been billowing about in the tub as if it meant to escape gradually became still, and any sign of the girl beneath it was invisible to Christine now. She had left her there…Let her drown again…

"I'm sorry," she finally managed to whimper. "I'm sorry…"

The white sheet looked so small…Christine couldn't imagine how it could possibly conceal even such a little girl so completely now.

"Forgive me…" Slowly, she released her desperate grip on the commode and took a fraught step back toward the bathtub's edge.

"Forgive me," she pleaded, but as she leaned back over the water, she did not kneel again. There was no red on the sheet anymore. There was no blood in the water.

Her teardrops left the tiniest rings of ripples that disappeared against the sides of the bathtub. "I'm sorry…"

Her fingertips dipped below the surface to brush against the white fabric. It was soft. Strands of fringe tangled about each other with the movement of the water her hand caused. This wasn't a sheet at all. She clasped it, and gently, so gently drew it up out of the water. The drips dropped from it with soft, wet plunks. There was nothing beneath it. Nothing else in the bathtub at all.

Christine took a careful step back and looked down at the fabric she held. It was far too small to be the white sheet from the laboratory. But what was it? She pressed the water from it, then she carefully unfolded its twists, she straightened each of its wrinkles…and then she knew exactly what it was she held. It was her shawl. Her hands twitched and she dropped it onto the floor, just barely managing to take another step back without slipping. Her eyes were uncontrollably locked on that white lump of wet cloth, but her hand found the wall behind her and she followed it slowly, very slowly to the open door and out of the bathroom. Only when she felt the carpet beneath her feet again did she tear her eyes from the shawl and turn around.

Her bedroom was dark. All the lights were out and the features of the room were only dimly illuminated by what light spilled through the bathroom door.

"No," she whimpered again, and she desperately tried to keep her eyes open as her face contorted in hysteria. Her fingers ran back through her hair and she clenched at it, nearly tearing it from her own scalp as she shook her head back and forth between dry heaves of terror.

The electric lights behind her flickered.

"No!" she screamed, and she whirled about to face the bathroom again.

They buzzed and popped softly, then flickered again, noticeably dimmer.

"Stop it!" Her throat tore with the intensity of her shriek. "Stop!"

The sizzling was growing and her bare feet were numb in the icy water.

"No!" she cried and she turned and ran into the darkness.

In the spastic flashes of remaining light, her violently shaking hands found the matches in her drawer and she threw herself to the gas lamp at the wall. She lifted the match, about to strike it—then she froze. The smell…The smell of the gas…It wasn't just at the lamp. It was all around her. It filled the entire room that flashed about her like a lightning storm. Darkness…A moment of light…Darkness…A few more moments of light… She dropped the matches. The gas was still on, but the lights were out. She took a step back from the lamp. The gas…the gas… Darkness, a flash a light, darkness, two more flashes, darkness… She waited. She shook. At the next moment of light, she would turn off the gas and she would leave the room. She waited…A flash! But it was too brief! She waited… Light again! The gas was off and she was out the door before she had the chance to find herself in darkness again.

In the cold, dim drawing room, she sank onto the couch and sobbed for some time into pillow.

"What do you want from me?" she finally whimpered. "I'm sorry…"

She thought she heard a door close down the hall, and she sat up quickly.

"Erik?" she whispered.

Silence…Soft and gentle silence, but silence all the same.

She dropped her face into her hands and murmured to herself:

"I am going mad…"

She told herself she did not believe in ghosts. She told herself she was not afraid. She told herself they weren't real. What was real? Elainie was dead. Erik was going to find out how she had died… Erik was going to—Christine stood up. She needed to see what was real. Before she began to rave…She needed to tighten her grasp for the sake of her own sanity. She needed to see Elainie, harmless and pitiable, dry and eyes closed, under her white sheet. She needed to see it right now.

The metal handle of the laboratory door was, as always, chilling to her touch. And when she oh-so-silently entered the room, she made no move to go around the concealing shelves, but instead made her way straight to her corner on the floor and found her convenient crack between the books that gave her the full view of the entire room. Erik was not there. Not where she could see…But she heard…She heard something. A grating noise…Metal against metal… or perhaps metal against stone. And she knew it was coming from that partially open door that led to the back room she had never known. He was back there, and Elainie was on the table all alone…and her sheet was gone.

Christine grasped at the cold metal edge of the shelf above her head and pulled herself up to stand once more. At eye level, there were a great deal more spaces between books and papers and cases for her to see. If Erik had been there, surely he would have seen her through those gaps, but he was not there. Elainie was alone…and her sheet was gone. Her tiny torso was spread opened wide, and from this angle, Christine could clearly see all she could not see the other night. All she had never, in her most graphic nightmares, feared she might see. Red organs and grey entrails contrasted themselves mutely with the white of bones to which clung flakes of blood that had had time to dry beneath that sheet since two nights ago. Blue and black veins coursed the open cavity all the way up to the white of the throat where the skin remained unmarred just beneath that once sweet, little face that had sunken so into gauntness that the little girl now more resembled an old woman.

Christine pressed her hands to her mouth to suppress the gagging moans that threatened to erupt from within her, even though she doubted they could have been heard over the wretched discordant noise that continued to fill the rooms. She could not tear her eyes from that cold, lonely, naked, and disemboweled child who lay, so small, on that cold, hard metal table surrounded by those cold metal trays, each containing a separate bloodied organ, mutilated with surgical precision, that contrasted so darkly in their metallic glint with the soft gold of the curls of her hair. Her hair…which Christine just now noticed had been partially…removed. Shaved away and left to reveal the white flesh of her little doll's scalp.

The constant grating noise suddenly stopped. Christine gasped and dropped to the floor again, curing into a ball against the piercing cold in her corner, and once more resuming the position of the invisible observer. She saw Erik then emerge from that back door. Just as the time previous, he was without his mask and in his shirtsleeves, one of which was rolled up above the elbow, the other remaining fastened at the cufflink. He approached the table and set down the metal instrument he carried. It clanked against the table too loudly, and it was then that Christine noted just how much irritated anger filled Erik's deathly features.

"Well," he snapped at the child corpse. "If this is how you'll have it."

He reached to adjust the lamp above the table and Christine did all she could not to gasp as she saw his expression all the more clearly then. What she had taken for anger appeared to her now as hideous, terrifying, unabashed hatred! And yet…the moistness of tearstains on his sunken cheeks glinted in that lamplight.

Once satisfied with the angle of the lamp, he released it and all but tore the cufflink from his sleeve, pushing it up carelessly. He then laughed softly and leaned over Elainie's placid face.

"There is an answer to everything," he hissed at her. "Now that I have mine, let's find yours."

He then retrieved the metal tool he had set down earlier, lifting it to the light, and its sharpened teeth shone like diamonds. Christine finally recognized it then as some kind of surgical bone saw.

Before she even had time to react to the realization, Erik placed one of his long, white, skeletal hands over the little girl's forehead just below where her miserable golden curls had been so rudely removed.

"As you intend to be difficult," he continued to speak directly to the eviscerated corpse, "I intend to be comprehensive." And then he pressed the saw down into the child's scalp.

At the first sight of the dark, dead blood that became visible beneath the parting of the pale flesh, Christine lost control of her own body, and she began heaving so uncontrollably in breathless sobs, that even had her eyes remained on the sight, she would not have been able to see it for the flood of tears that were at once running across her vision. She pressed her hands over her mouth and nose and buried her face against her knees. She did not even let herself breathe, for she knew with the first gasp would come her screams. Despite all efforts to try to regain control, she was shaking violently now, and she knew at any moment, the shelves would begin to rattle. She pushed her head back and sucked in a silent breath as she wiped at her eyes. She would not look though the crack. She would not look again. She looked up. She—Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. Erik was standing directly before her.

He sighed and shook his head as he continued to wipe his hands on a towel that was already stained with browned blood.

She pressed herself as far back against the wall as she could.

"Christine." He sighed again and dropped one of his arms to rest on top of a shelf where his fingertips drummed against it impatiently. "If you wanted to watch…All you had to do was ask."

She could do nothing, but stare at him in silent shock.

He stared down at her for a moment, then dropped the towel on an empty shelf above her head and stepped forward, extending a hand down to her.

Her stare shifted to his hand and her grasping gaze took in each vein running from his wrist up his bare arm.

When she did not move to take his hand, the tension in it visibly increased and the dark sockets of his eyes narrowed in his skull of a face.

"Do you want to watch or not?" he demanded, leaving her no room to avoid answer any longer.

"I…" her voice was a rasp of choked anguish. "I'm sorry…"

"What's done is done."

He reached down to her the slightest bit more, and this time she took his hand to stand. Once she was on her feet, he released her, retrieved his towel, and moved to lead her back around the shelves.

"What's not done is very little," he continued. "And about to be done with entirely."

She said nothing more as she followed him, and once Elainie was in sight she made certain her eyes remained fixed on the child's face below the dark incision of the saw and above the gaping hole below the neck.

"I believe you two know each other," Erik said with a wave of his hand toward the dead body as Christine shivered where she remained near the shelves.

He turned back to study her and with a tilt of his own corpse-like head, added, "Why, you're all wet. Really, Christine. Giving yourself pneumonia will solve absolutely none of your problems." He picked up a white sheet that was tossed over the counter and approached her with it.

She took a step back, her eyes widening all the more. "No!" she gasped.

Erik stopped where he stood. "If you don't want to watch, go back to your room."

She shook her head. "That is…that's _her_ sheet…"

He continued to approach her. "It is _my _sheet. And it will warm you all the same." He stopped before her and reached around her to wrap it about her shoulders. "This won't take long…" His tone was softer now, more sympathetic…If only for a moment. "Otherwise I'd insist you go change first…But I'm so close to being _done _with this…" He turned back to face the table. "There really is nothing left to examine. No other place that might hold the answer…Other than her brain."

Christine clutched the edges of the sheet tightly as she felt the corner of the shelf press into her back. Was he really so close? The answer was so close…

Erik returned to the table and picked up his saw again. He looked across to Christine. "Watch closely now. This is not something I'll be able to demonstrate twice."

She swallowed thickly and nodded her head.

Erik regarded her motionlessly for a moment. And he appeared to be frozen again, but she knew he was not, for she could see his fingers tighten about the handle of his blade. Then, without another word, he returned his gaze to the child's skull and pressed the blade of the saw to the dark line in the scalp he had already made.

The thick tearing of the running of the saw's teeth across the dead flesh and the gross grating of dead bone was so wretchedly sickening that Christine almost dropped the sheet as she pressed her still trembling hands to her ears to drown it out. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited...waited in tortured, teeth-grinding agony until, though muffled, she heard metal touch metal again. Erik had put down the saw.

She opened her eyes just in time to see him systematically pull off the top of Elainie's skull, clumps of golden curls still attached to the scalp, and expose the soft and plump pink brain matter beneath.

She screamed! She dropped the sheet and screamed again. She turned, running for the door, but Erik caught her before she made it there. He spun her about to face him and pressed her back against the wall, pinning her there by the arms.

"You think you can leave now?" he demanded.

She struggled against him, pulling to free her arms. Screaming and screaming and screaming in nauseated horror.

One of his hands pressed against her mouth and she saw a brief flash of lights as the back of her head cracked into the wall with the force.

"_You_ wanted to see!" he shouted at her. "You came here!"

His unmasked face was so close, and she could see the tear streaks hiding in the cracks of his hollow cheeks again despite the blazing fire of his yellow eyes deep within their pits of black.

"Do you think I have appreciated being spied upon? Do you think I _enjoy_ playing to this _sick_ fascination you've developed? Do you think I give a _damn _about why she died? I am doing this for _you, _Christine! I am doing this _for you_!"

Even the pressure of his hand couldn't keep back her sobs then, and pushing against him with all her strength, she twisted away from him and escaped to the door. She was running! Running back to her room, and he must have not pursued her, for she made it there and managed to close and lock the door behind her.

It was only after she had locked herself in that, through her wracking sobs, she realized that the lights in the room were on again. The doorknob moved. She stumbled back away from it. He was trying to get in! She backed all the way to the bed and then clung to its banister for support, burying her face in the curtains. Go away! If only he would go away! She sobbed until her breath was long since gone, but the doorknob did not rattle again.

She had begun to quiet soon after only because she simply did not have the strength to continue such grief any longer, and it was in the silence that resulted that Christine was certain she heard some small noise. She jumped, releasing the banister, and whirled about. But before she even had the chance to see if there was anything—or anyone—there, the lights in the room went out once more. The darkness was not abrupt, in fact it was rather natural, as if someone was turning off the lamps quite normally, but it did not matter. The hysterical running of Christine's pulse finally exploded, and through the blackness she knew she saw, however fleeting, the twinkling of stars—the flashing of fireflies—But they were gone too quickly to grasp, and the loathsome demon of unconsciousness claimed her once again.


	7. Death

**Death **

Christine was warm. And although she had come to realize that she had returned to consciousness, the heaviness of her eyelids refused to lift. She felt no need to force them to open, but as she rested easily, the golden glow behind them slowly turned to pink, and then to red, and she realized that she was perhaps far too warm. Pulsating heat beat against her face and her entire body felt unnaturally cocooned in stifling bulk. She shifted slightly where she lay and moved to lift a hand to her eyes as she wanted to open them, but found her arm caught in twisted cloths. She whimpered slightly and was greeted by an answering throb of pain from the very back of her skull. What had happened? Where was she? The last thing she remembered…

She opened her eyes immediately and saw fire. Real fire. She gasped, then winced once more in pain and tried to move her arms again. She knew what fire meant! _He_ always came to her through the fire!

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head against the tender pain, and she turned her face away from the fire before she let her eyes open again. And then, as she did, she found herself in Erik's drawing room. She was bundled in blankets and lying on his black, leather sofa that had been moved from its usual position by the wall to instead stand directly before the fireplace, which was ablaze. She was very uncomfortably warm, and yet she shivered as she heard noises coming from the kitchen. They were quite ordinary, commonplace kitchen noises. _Erik… _Erik must be in the kitchen.

Christine twisted slightly to sit up and grimaced once more at the ache at the back of her head. It took her several moments, but she managed to work one of her arms free from the blankets, and she brushed back sticky strands of snarled hair from her hot forehead. Why was the couch so close to the fire? She glanced about and saw that Erik's chair too had been drawn up near the hearth. A very large book was abandoned upon its seat. Had he been reading there while she slept? So near… She could still hear his soft sounds in the kitchen.

Her exposed bare arm felt cold now as she stared at that book in the chair. Its hundreds of browned pages pursed slightly around a leather bookmark near its center. She leaned forward slightly to edge it off the seat and into her lap, and was momentarily startled by just how heavy it was. With her one hand, she pulled it open to an arbitrary page. It took her several moments of looking in confusion of illiteracy before she understood that it was upside down. She righted it, but as she stared at the large pages filled with tiny text, she still could not make out a word of it, for she realized it was written entirely in German. She pulled the book closed again and glanced at the title. The only word she recognized was "und." Her fingers delicately traced the long and unpronounceable embossed words before moving up to the top of the book's cover and digging into the small space where the pages were split by the bookmark. She pulled it open again, this time to the page Erik had marked, and looked down.

She found herself face to face with a face that could hardly be called a face at all. The drawing was so lifelike that she was almost uncertain for a moment whether or not it was a photograph. But this tome was certainly not quite modern enough for photographs. And yet it was unlike anything she had ever seen in life. A cadaverous head stared out at her from the page with two round eyeballs enclosed by lidless sockets and bound only to the webbed muscles that lined the skull by dark veins. Black nostrils gaped open in a nose that was half gone, and a lipless mouth of crooked teeth grinned at her from sparse gums that had been shaded with the greys of death itself.

Christine's mouth dropped open. This face was a human face…a dead, human face…but without the skin! She covered the image with her hand and turned away in disgust for a moment, but only for a moment, before she turned back again and leaned down to peer at it all the more closely. Where was his skin? Why had Erik marked this page? She turned the page quickly and was met only with columns of endless indecipherable text. She turned another page. More text and a table diagram that made no sense to her. She began flipping through the pages one after the next as quickly as she could with one hand while simultaneously trying to work her other arm free from the many blankets that entangled her. Suddenly, she stopped. More illustrations. The two facing pages that were opened to her had been gridded into eighths and each box contained different, yet equally gruesome heads, each turned from every possible angle. One had no skin or eyelids like the first and the nose was completely missing. Another had fully closed eyelids but absolutely no trace of a bottom jaw. The pockmarked flesh of the cheeks hung down in uneven folds. Another in profile was flattened in the back almost cubically where sparse strands of hair still hung limply from the scalp. Yet another's skull was carved open and the brain fully exposed in every rendered detail.

She turned the page. There were more. The smallest of whimpers rose from Christine's throat, but she made no move to look away from the row after row of exposed muscles, bulging eyes, jutting bones, and furrowed brains, each underlined by a wretchedly incomprehensible caption.

"Christine." Erik's voice came at her sternly from behind.

She dropped the book quickly to her lap and turned where she sat to see him standing in the doorway. In one of his hands, he held a bowl from which steamy vapors rose up before him to shroud his black mask. She gasped, and the yellow light of his eyes flashed once through the steam before he slowly set the bowl down on a table by the wall and began to approach her.

She turned back to face the fire and quickly fumbled with the blankets to cover most of her bare skin again.

He came around the couch and stood between her and the fire, regarding her silently from above with his arms folded.

She kept her eyes downcast and neither of them spoke. She thought it strange that he studied her so and did not question her on how she was feeling or anything of the sort…But then, all at once, the events of the previous night in the laboratory came flooding back to her recollection. Her head snapped up and she met his eyes with an expression of utter shock.

He relaxed slightly in his stance and gestured to the book in her lap. "Schädelabweichungen."

She blinked and shook her head slowly. "I don't understand…" Did he think that this book was the only cause for her reaction?

He sighed softly and knelt before her, pulling the book from her lap slightly. "Abnormalities…" He flipped through a couple pages.

It took her several breaths before she managed the voice to speak again, most unsettled by his response…Lack of response…

"Of…Of the face?"

He looked up at her quickly for a moment, then looked down again and turned another page. "Of the cranium."

She followed his gaze to the diagrams he had found and said softly, "Oh…"

He looked at her again. "One day, Christine, your curiosity will kill you."

She met his eyes and stammered something that was not even a word to which he only shook his head and sighed again.

"I'm sorry…" she whispered.

"This," he tapped a picture with one of his long, white fingers.

She glanced at it and began to tremble. It was the open view of the top of a man's brain.

"She had an abnormality," he continued.

"She…" Christine tugged her blankets a little more tightly about her and silently wished Erik wasn't between her and the fire just now.

He looked to her again and said with soft exasperation, "You wanted to know why she died."

She did not look at him, just nodded, and kept her eyes fixed on that drawing.

His fingers moved across it to the edge of the opened skull, and he went on. "Like this…A malignant growth."

"A…" Christine shuddered.

Erik turned the page to a drawing of a man's head in profile where not only the cap of his skull was removed, but so was the entire side, leaving revealed all the tendons and nerves that ran to the spine.

"You will, of course, forgive the fact that this is a man. Scientific researchers do not regularly make a practice of carving up little girls. Even German ones. But, like this." The tip of Erik's thin finger traced an opaque shape along one artery. "Not exactly alike, but you understand the concept."

Christine shook her head, her face paling. "No…No, Erik… I don't understand. I don't understand."

He turned the page to another drawing that showed the same face from a different angle. He spoke very slowly. "Such a growth could cause hallucinations or schizophrenia or even eventually cut off the flow of blood to the brain. It is how a stroke is caused. Sometimes it can be fatal."

Christine tore her gaze from the staring eyes on the page to meet Erik's. "She…?"

"It would have been a sudden death, Christine…"

"I…"

"She might have simply fallen into the river and been washed into the ducts that lead to our lake… Or someone could have deposited her there. I have sometimes found the strangest of things washed into my lake. She would have been dead before she had the chance to swallow any water."

"She…She just…died?"

"It is not uncommon," he said softly. "It's just that she was so young… It had not even occurred to me…"

"But...But who would drop her into the river? Even after she was dead? How? Why?"

"Christine," Erik said with very firm gentleness. "That is an answer I cannot discover for you."

She lowered her eyes silently and felt the sting of tears. She lifted a hand to wipe at them before they could arrive as she desperately scanned the ghastly drawing for any other sort of answer it might hold.

Erik remained silent for several sympathetic moments before he moved to close the book.

She grasped at the edge to stop him. "No…"

He hesitated. "Christine, you should not look into my books. I should not have left it here near you."

"I want to see," she breathed and turned the book back into her lap as Erik released it reluctantly. She turned a few pages. "All these men…"

"Quite dead," Erik said softly, as if it would assure her.

"Yes…" she whispered. She continued to turn pages of text until she found more pictures. These faces had skin, but they were sunken with the age of embalmed corpses and their abnormalities were more apparent to her as they existed on the surface as twisted malformations. She leaned down to look more closely, then turned the page to find the same four faces, but now with their skin removed. The great round eyes were uneven in their sockets and the nostrils gaped back into the bridge of the nose. Each of them was missing many teeth and the gums were shrunken almost to nothing against the shriveled muscles of the jaws. She turned the next page. Now they were missing their eyes and most of their muscles and left with gaping holes of mouths and noses in drawings that showed just how deeply their cranial abnormalities were rooted.

Though she was still warm, Christine shivered, and she lifted her face to look up from these skulls to meet Erik's eyes. He still knelt before her and was watching her very closely. She exhaled slowly, and then carefully, so very carefully, she lifted one of her hands to his mask.

He moved, just slightly, but he did not stop her and the soft light of his eyes that were made visible by the shadow cast by the fire behind him, remained locked with hers.

Christine's fingers brushed the smooth surface of the mask, and as they moved to its edge, her breath caught in her throat at the feel of the fineness of his hair at his temple. She hesitated then, waited for him to object…But when he did not, she slipped her fingertips underneath and removed his mask.

The taught skin of his forehead furrowed slightly where his brow should have been in what could have been confusion or concern as Christine took her time to set the mask down upon the book before looking to his face again. Certainly she had looked at his miserable face this closely before… He had been even closer last night, when her head had cracked against the wall, leaving her with the dull ache she could still feel… But she had never truly _seen_ his face until now. She did not gawk or gape at it, she merely studied it. And her expression was not one of curiosity, but one of need.

She lifted both her hands again and placed them so lightly on each of his gaunt cheeks. The soft tips of her fingers pulsed with the very hesitance of their movement, and Erik's eyes narrowed slightly as she pulled a little closer to him. His eyes… She stared deeply into them now, for she could actually _see_ them… His actual eyes. And they reflected every fleeting snatch of the firelight that beat off the walls of the room. Her fingers became surer of themselves then and they very slowly began to roam across his sunken flesh. They crept up to trace the corners of his eyelids… Then they fluttered to probe lightly at the nose he did not have… And then they moved to trail so tenderly across what he could best call his lips…

Christine and Erik exhaled simultaneously and she could feel his soft breath against her face as he surely felt hers… He wasn't moving… So still… Frozen completely in time. She leaned all the closer to him and her own lips parted.

He tensed and she barely noticed the cushion of the sofa move under his hand where it gripped the edge.

She took another breath and her own forehead almost touched his… And then, so barely, she whispered, "Death…"

Erik's eyes flashed almost blindingly and he pulled away from her touch, snatching the mask, and it was on his face again before she realized it had happened.

"No!" Christine gasped and pushed her blankets aside to reach out to take it back from him, but he caught her by the wrists and forcefully kept her hands away.

She winced at the pain of his grip, but he either did not notice or did not care, for it only grew tighter.

"Erik…" she pleaded.

He pushed her hands back and stood abruptly, taking the book with him.

She shivered and looked down, realizing only then with the shift of the blankets that they were all that was keeping her modesty as she was not wearing her nightgown. She pulled them more tightly about herself and turned her face against the cushion.

"I… I have been having dreams," she whispered. "About the Angel of Death."

Erik stepped back and turned to the mantle. He dropped the book on top of it and then only looked down into the fire.

"The Angel of Death comes to me…when I am a child…"

"Christine…" he sighed tensely.

She stared at his back for a very long moment as her hands twisted at the material of the blankets before she spoke again:

"Erik…Why did you undress me?"

"Your nightgown was wet," he answered irritably. "In that freezing room… I tried to wake you." He turned back to glance at her over his shoulder. "I found you on the floor."

She shivered again. "I…I locked the door."

"I unlocked it," he said shortly.

She stared at him in pained confusion, and he shook his head then moved to go back around the couch as he spoke:

"If you do not have pneumonia, it is a miracle."

She turned where she sat to watch him cross the room. "I…"

"You do not have a fever."

She nodded slightly as she watched him retrieve the bowl he had left on the table and mix it briefly with the spoon without looking up.

"I assure you, you were sufficiently blanketed before I removed your wet nightgown."

She nodded again and saw fresh steam rise from the contents of the bowl as Erik stirred it back to life.

He lifted his head to look across at her and gestured. "I put it there to dry."

She looked and saw it draped neatly near the fire, most likely quite dry by now… But it was not alone. Draped just as neatly alongside it was her fringed, white shawl. She stared at it in fixed disbelief until Erik's black shape suddenly obstructed her view. She lifted her face to look at him, and she trembled with much more than cold now.

He glanced at her shaking and then at the strong fire so near to her, then back to her again before saying with pensive grimness, "Perhaps you do have a fever…"

He set the bowl conveniently upon the mantle and then leaned over her. "You should take a hot bath."

"No!" she gasped too quickly. "No!"

Both of Erik's hands clenched, but he spoke with complete comforting calmness, "I took care of the mess you made of your bathroom."

"I…" Christine could not even speak, so she only shook her head with frightened violence, tears rapidly spilling from her quickly reddening eyes.

Erik stopped, startled by her reaction, then he knelt before her again and lifted his hands, but did not quite touch her.

"Christine…" he said in attempt to calm her, but incensed concern was betrayed in his tone.

She continued to shake her head, managing to say, "Please!"

He hesitated another moment in perplexed alarm, then took her by her blanketed shoulders and pressed her back against the cushion to still her.

She gaped at him with wide eyes, but her shaking ceased at once.

He stared at her very closely for a long moment, his gaze roving over every aspect of her face in search of an answer before he released her shoulder and said, with utmost respect, "Forgive me…" And then he placed one of his cold, long, thin, white, and skeletal hands upon her forehead.

She did not react other than to continue to stare at him as her eyes grew all the wider.

He kept his hand upon her brow for several long moments before moving his fingers to her lower eyelid, pulling at it very gently to examine her eye and then did the same to the other. He then moved his hand to her neck, seeming to ignore her hair there, and marked her pulse silently.

She shivered again.

He withdrew his hand as gently as he had placed it there and sat back where he knelt.

"Oh, Christine…" he barely whispered, and the sadness was unmistakable in the music of his voice.

She lowered her eyes and once more felt that sting of tears. Her own voice trembled as she spoke, "The Angel of Death comes for me in the night…through the fire… And I am a child and I trust him… I want him to come for me… I… It excites my child mind… I…" She shook her head then, unable to go on.

"You cannot stay here anymore…"

Erik had spoken so softly that she was not certain she had even heard him correctly. She looked up to him again.

He shook his head and added, more firmly, "It is making you ill… All of this."

"Erik…" she whimpered.

"You must go back home Christine. Where you can rest free of nightmares and free of _death_…of all kinds."

"I…" she protested only weakly. "Please…"

Erik stood to retrieve the bowl from where he had left it and spoke with soft command as he handed it to her:

"Take this while I draw you a bath. We will go back upstairs as soon as you are dressed."

She only nodded and accepted it, unable to speak, and then he was gone.

The gentle steam that rose from the bowl wisped at her senses. She did not recognize the mixture of herbs, but she consumed it obediently and once she had, she could not deny the warmth with which it filled her. She reached to set the empty dish upon the nearest end table and for the first time noticed that her dressing gown was laid out for her across the back of the couch. She glanced back in the direction Erik had gone, but the door to the Louis-Philippe room was closed. She rose to her feet and one by one unwrapped the blankets from about her, then hurriedly put on her dressing gown. She looked to the door again. It was still closed. Her hands and feet felt cold and so she moved closer to the fire and remained there until Erik returned again.

"Come, Christine," he called to her with what felt like almost too much kindness.

She turned to see him, then slowly moved around the couch to join him at the door to her room, but once at that door, she froze mid-step.

She clasped her hands to her breast and shook her head. "No…I can't… I don't want to take a bath…"

He studied her for a moment before gesturing across the threshold to the Louis-Philippe bed, and speaking, again with too much kindness, "Why don't you lie down, Christine."

"No," she whimpered again as she stared through the doorway into the room for another moment before turning around and looking up to him. "I'm cold…"

"A bath will warm you…" he began.

"Please!" she cried suddenly as her hands twisted at the ruffled lace of her dressing gown. "Please don't make me go back in that room!"

"Christine," he began again, his kindness shifting to disapproval.

"Erik, please!" Her hands shot out, and she clung to the lapels of his jacket desperately, moving away from the doorway. "I can't go back in there! She's… Please! I don't want to go home, I don't! But I can't go back in that room again! I can't!"

He stared down at her for a startled moment before gently removing her from his person.

"Would…" He paused, in thought. "You will take a bath in my room."

She shivered and nodded quickly.

He took a hesitant step back from her. "The heat has been on for some hours… The house should be back at its usual temperature soon."

"A…A bath will warm me," she nodded with no assurance whatsoever.

"And then you will go home," he said with final determination.

"I…"

He did not let her object. "I am taking you back up." He turned then and crossed to the door of his own room.

Christine shivered again and did not follow him, but instead very slowly turned to look back through the doorway behind her. Why was she so afraid of this room now? She had slept in this room for weeks… And it still looked so normal to her at the moment. The bed was made neatly, the lamps were high… She took a step to the door, and peered in further. The lamps could not just go off unless someone turned them off… There was no way. And even if they could, if she left the door open… She stepped into the room. Nothing happened. She glanced back over her shoulder into the drawing room, then took another step further inside. All was silent. Erik had drawn her a bath. He said he had tended to the flooded bathroom… She looked over at the open bathroom door, lit up from within by those electric lights that glowed now with flawless constancy. She took another step toward the bathroom door. She saw a towel that was lain across the carpet just outside the door, and her toes curled at the remembrance of stepping there the night before.

She moved all the way over and put her hands on the frame of the bathroom door, leaning over to peer inside without stepping on the towel. Dense steam was wafting up from the bathtub that was filled with the foam of salts that rose above its edge. She could smell those salts even from where she stood, but she did not dare approach. A soft plink echoed against the marble walls as a single drop of water escaped the faucet. Christine shivered again. She wanted to withdraw, but her gaze was transfixed by that gentle billowing of the transparent steam. It was all that moved in the pretty portrait of a most unthreatening bathtub. Christine sighed softly. The soft sounds of the effervescent foam were just barely audible to her. Another plink sounded, momentarily drowning them out. She smiled very slightly to herself. The steam above the foam was gradually becoming still. But then, all of a sudden, the foam itself was not. Christine distinctly saw it abruptly surge and begin to churn. She jumped and stepped onto the towel in the doorway. Cold wetness sank through and pierced the flesh of her foot.

"No!" she choked and immediately turned and fled the Louis-Philippe room, not stopping until she was once more before the blazing fire at the other end of the drawing room. Her hands pressed to her face and her fingers clutched at her hair as she tried to catch her breath. She heard a soft sound. Jumping again, she turned quickly and saw that her white shawl had fallen from where it had been draped to the floor. She stared down at it, then at her nightgown, which remained where Erik had placed it, then back down to the shawl. With a shaking hand, she bent to pick it up again. The soft fabric was cold to the touch. She reached with her other hand and picked up the nightgown. It was quite warm from the heat of the fire. Christine shook for but a moment before at once thrusting both articles onto the floor, and then she turned and ran straight for Erik's room.

She closed the door quickly behind her and leaned back against it to catch her tremulous breath.

"Erik?" she called too softly.

He was nowhere that she could see, but she heard the distinct sound of running water coming from his bathroom around the corner combined with a softer sound of a strange musical melody, the origin of which she could not pinpoint. She continued to shiver. It was much colder in Erik's room. She glanced about hesitantly and stepped away from the door. This funereal décor never had done much to put her particularly at ease, but she felt quite a bit more comfortable knowing that Erik was just around the corner doing something so commonplace as drawing her a bath. Christine pulled her dressing gown more tightly about herself and moved past Erik's coffin quickly to linger near the organ. A drawer in the table behind the bench hung half opened. She hesitated for a moment as her eyes fixated, and then she approached it and gently slid it back into place. She paused for another moment, then with fluttering fingers, took its knob again and pulled it back open so that she could peer inside.

"Christine."

She released the drawer and turned about quickly to face Erik.

"Do not forget what I have told you about curiosity."

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

He regarded her silently before turning back to go through the double doors from which he'd emerged. She followed him this time, and tried not to reveal her curiosity as she looked about. She had never been through these doors before. They had entered what would seem to be a very ordinary and immaculate gentleman's dressing room, save for the fact that it was adorned with the same dark colors of the previous room.

Erik gestured to another set of double doors at the opposite end of the large room. "The bath is through there, dear Christine. As you insist upon not reentering your room, I will retrieve your clothing and leave it here for you, then I will close the doors. Take all the time you like…but do not fall asleep."

She nodded, but continued to keep her arms folded tightly across her breast, her hands clutching at the ruffles at her throat.

"If you fall asleep," Erik continued, "I will not know to wake you. You do not want to drown in your own bathwater."

She nodded again, more slowly. And he seemed reluctant to leave her for just a moment, but then he turned and left without another word.

She glanced about the dressing room once more to take it in before she moved to the bath. Of course, there were no mirrors… The bathroom itself, she was impressed to find, was even larger than hers in the Louis-Philippe room. The tone of the marble was much darker and the fixtures carved with gravity, but it still appeared most comfortable.

The bath was waiting for her and it looked exactly the same as the one she had abandoned in her own bathroom. Vapors of steam spiraled up from fizzling foam, the scent of which seemed to calm and refresh her at once. Slowly, still shivering, she removed what she wore and approached it. Carefully, she bent over its edge and with a tentative hand parted the foam so that she might see into the water. The steam clouded her vision, but she saw nothing unusual…nothing to frighten her. She straightened and glanced over her shoulder about the room. Nothing at all to frighten her.

Her shivering had increased significantly, for now she was wearing absolutely nothing except the small silver necklace still wrapped about her wrist. And it too was cold. So she stepped into the bath and sank into its warmth. She had already completely forgotten Erik's warning not to fall asleep…

That is not to say that she intended to fall asleep, but sleep must have claimed her, for the next thing she knew, she was forcing heavy eyelids back open again. Someone was there. She gasped and rubbed at her eyes, but only succeeded in splashing water into them, obscuring her sight.

Through the endlessly rising fog of steam, the fire of two glowing eyes flashed as a tall, black, faceless shape bent over her.

She tried to sit up, but her hands slipped on the wet surface of the bath and for several choking moments she was completely submerged. She managed to rise again. He was still there. She gasped for air. He was holding the blade. In the clear light of the bathroom, the staff of his blade twisted in his cold, skeletal hand. And then she was underwater again and the light was gone.


	8. Goodbye

**Goodbye**

"_Christine."_

The voice that called her was hollower than the darkness itself.

_"Songbird…"_

She opened her eyes. The clouds were above her, amorphous and white, floating softly against the night sky, and the shape of the moon rippled as if it were only a reflection of itself.

_"Songbird,"_ the dark shadow that loomed over her called again. There were only two glowing stars in that sky. She turned her head slightly. She saw nothing. She glanced the other way. Nothing. The only way to look was up and the only sight to greet her now was that of the floating clouds. Floating… She was floating too. She could feel it. Languid strands of her own hair drift past her eyelashes.

_"Come to me." _Where had he gone? Her burning eyes could no longer find his shadow, and his voice was muted… It cut through to her ears from another world. It called to her and she ached to find it. Her whole body ached… Her chest was screaming.

She blinked slowly, and then finally exhaled. Silent bubbles rose up to join the clouds, pushing them across the dark sky, obscuring the swimming moon. They were her own shivering bubbles, and she watched them slip away and take endless time to disappear. They were her life's breath. And now they were gone.

Her lips parted to breathe again. She paused only to close her eyes and shut out the night.

_"Songbird!"_

She inhaled. She choked. Her entire body spasmed with a sudden jolt and she shot up out of the water. Gagging and sputtering, her trembling hands gripped at the edge of the bathtub and she leaned over it, gasping for air. Water poured from her mouth and nose and she squeezed her eyes shut against the raw, tearing pain in her chest as she continued to cough constantly, her nails breaking with how tightly she clutched at the marble.

"No…" she finally rasped once she could breathe again, and shakily, she surrendered her hold on the edge and put her wet and wrinkled hands to her face, clumsily pushing back the clumps of hair that stuck there. The pendant of the silver necklace bounced against her cheek. She froze and then lowered her hand, looking at it. "No…"

She drew her bare knees up to her bare chest and wrapped both her bare arms tightly around them as she fearfully looked about the empty bathroom.

"I…" she barely whispered. "I cannot come to you…"

There was no reply. There was nothing at all. Christine was quite alone.

She remained that way until all the white foam on the surface of her bathwater had long evaporated. She remained that way just until she began to shiver again. And then she pulled herself out of the bathtub and fell to her knees where her dressing gown remained where she'd left it on the floor. Shaking, she tugged it about herself, its folds sticking uncomfortably to her wet flesh, and then she pushed herself up to stand again and approached the double doors with soft, wrinkled footsteps that left a trail of watery prints upon the dark marble of Erik's bathroom. She shuddered at each cold drop from her hair that dripped icily down her back, but she did not move to take a towel until she was securely out of the bathroom and the doors were closed again behind her.

Inside Erik's dressing room, the temperature was finally at its usual warmth. The opposite doors were closed and a full set of clothing was neatly waiting for her. He had brought for her absolutely everything she would need, from her outwear for the cold March weather down to the combs for her hair. If only there had been a mirror…

The act of dressing was mind-numbing to Christine—a numbness she more than welcomed. By the time she returned to the drawing room where Erik was waiting for her, also dressed fully to go, she was in such a dazed state that he reacted at once with alarm.

He instructed her to sit by the fire, but when she simply asked him why with frightened eyes, he only told her that she must let her hair dry before he would take her out of doors. Then he went straight to the kitchen.

While she waited, with nothing to study but the mantle before her, she noticed that the book Erik had left there earlier was now gone. She shuddered, then in sudden recollection, looked over to where she had dropped her shawl and nightgown. They too were gone. She exhaled slowly and clasped her hands together, sinking back against the cushions of the sofa and resting the heels of her boots against its base.

"You will rest more easily once you are home."

She glanced back over her shoulder. Erik had returned.

"And I want you to do nothing but rest," he continued. "You are not to go out. I will inform the management not to expect you to return for several days at the very least."

"I will miss so much," she murmured.

"Your _health _is your first priority, Christine…" He came around the couch to stand before her. "And mine."

She tilted her head to look up at him, and the drying of her hair tickled at the back of her neck.

He studied her expression for a moment, then handed her a drinking glass. "Be careful. It is warm."

She clasped it gently with both of her hands and looked down into it. "Is it tea?" she asked softly.

"It is for your health," was the only answer he gave her.

She took a sip and grimaced at the taste, looking back up to Erik feebly.

He narrowed his eyes and folded his arms across his chest.

She looked back down quickly and finished it.

He took the glass from her and set it aside, then took her gloved hand with his to help her stand, and he led her to the door. Outside at the false dock, she stopped, hesitating as he steadied the boat for her to get in.

"Erik… I…" She met his eyes with sudden anxiety. "I want to see her…before I leave…"

"No, Christine."

"Please, Erik…"

He stepped back from her before she could even consider clasping onto him. "Christine, you do not want to see her. Not as she is now."

"As she is…?" Christine tugged at the edges of her cloak.

"You cannot think that after a person has been taken apart she is simply put back together without a mark."

Christine paled slightly. "I… You…put her back together?"

He took up the oar irritably. "Would you have preferred me to leave her as she was?"

She shook her head. "I… How?"

"With a needle and thread, Christine." He sighed and gestured once more for her to get into the boat. "Just like a rag doll."

"Erik!" she gasped.

He met her eyes suddenly with a look that brought with it instant flashes of his horrific, unmasked expression of the night before in the laboratory. Christine at once found her place in the boat, and it was not until they were some distance upon the lake that she dared speak again:

"Where is she?"

"Still here, Christine," he answered softly. "But no longer in the house so that we may have some heat."

"I want to see her…"

"No, Christine."

"Where is she?"

"Do not ask me… She is safe."

Christine wrapped her arms about herself, watching the dark water of the lake slowly slip past the side of the boat. "Will she…stay there?"

"Do you want to bury her?"

She sighed sadly. "She deserves better than this…"

Erik remained very silent for several moments, but Christine distinctly noticed that his strokes of the oar at once had become more rigid. When he finally did speak, his tone was distant and his eyes too were set upon the waters of the lake:

"We could bury her in Averne."

Christine gasped and turned where she sat to look up at him. "No! No, Erik!…I could not bear that! Every time we came across, then, I would know she was down there… I would know she was underneath us in the water and I couldn't…No…I couldn't bear that…"

Erik tilted his head very slowly to look down at her desperate expression. "You couldn't bear that."

She shivered at the sheer iciness of his tone and looked away from him quickly. "No…" Her voice was almost too soft.

She felt Erik stop rowing the boat then, and she stiffened where she sat, but she dared not turn to him again. But he did not speak, and so, finally, she did:

"Where is she, Erik…? I want to see her…"

"If you ask once more about her, Christine," he spoke softly now, but with the most measured severity, "I will become more than seriously concerned for your mental stability. And I will take action. She is safe. Be at ease. Rest in peace." And then he began to row again and Christine did not dare so much as open her mouth once more for the remainder of their crossing.

How filled she was with questions! She had been so certain she would be content once she knew _how_ Elainie had died, but she still did not understand _why._ Why had Elainie come to _her?_ What was it she still wanted from Christine? Where were the answers? And now she was gone somewhere where Erik would never let her see her… How Christine longed simply for one last chance…if only to say goodbye.

When she and Erik parted ways once up above the cellars, the only goodbye he offered Christine was another stern instruction for her to rest. And then he was gone and she was alone again.

The hour was still fairly early in the evening, but it was not a performance night and the Opera seemed almost deserted. Perhaps rehearsals had ended early… Perhaps the workers were at dinner… Christine made her way through the empty halls towards an artists' exit slowly, for she was finally warm again and in no hurry to step out into the frozen winter's air.

It was as she left one corridor to turn into another that a soft voice startled her nearly off her feet.

"Songbird…" It rose up from the shadows behind her.

Christine caught her balance by a hand to the wall and turned about quickly to meet the eyes of an equally startled Jacqueline Galerne, who stood alone in the dim corridor.

"What…?" Christine stammered as she pressed a hand to her throat to catch her breath.

Jacqueline nodded to her with hurried politeness. "Good evening…"

Christine shook her head, uncertain of her own senses. "What… Did you just call me?"

"Oh!" Jacqueline gasped softly and smiled nervously. "It is what they called you in the papers once… More than once."

Christine's brow knit in confusion and she leaned a little more against the support of the wall. "They…?"

"The Swedish Songbird… They spoke of you as if you weren't Parisian at all… And now that I've met you, I cannot understand where they would get such an idea." She offered Christine another smile.

"I…" She shook her head slowly. "They called me that?"

Jacqueline nodded and approached her. "You don't read the papers? I always read the papers… Though I know some performers think it is bad luck to read their own reviews…" She stopped herself then before saying anything more, blushing slightly.

Christine stared at the girl blankly for a moment as if she was not quite certain if she were even actually there… And then she shook her head again, exhaling softly. "No… I suppose I just don't…have the time…"

"I didn't mean to imply that you were superstitious!" Jacqueline gasped, but the soft tone of her voice did not rise. "I hope I did not offend you—I would never want to offend you! I was just coming from my fitting… Oh! They've made me your understudy's understudy, I don't know if you have heard, so if she has to take your place, I will take hers… But I've just been finished being fitted for her costume, and I was surprised to see you, and all of a sudden I remembered those articles…"

Christine tried to reassure her with a smile but couldn't quite manage it. She spoke with gentle quickness to cease the girl's rambling that had begun to make her aching head spin, "You have not offended me at all…" But then her words trailed off into uncertainty and she only stared at the stranger's face in slight confusion.

"Galerne," the girl prompted with soft helpfulness. "But I would be most honored if you called me Jacqueline… And I won't call you The Swedish Songbird if you don't prefer the title; I would never want to offend you."

Christine did manage to smile this time. "Yes, I remember… We met at lunch."

"Yesterday." Jacqueline nodded.

Christine lost her balance slightly. "Was it only yesterday?"

She nodded again. "We wondered where you were today. Some of us were worried… Especially after…yesterday."

"I…" Christine shook her head. That incident in the café seemed like weeks ago to her now. But she tried to compose herself. "Yes…Galerne. Of course I remember… You don't believe in ghosts."

She smiled brightly. "I did say that, didn't I? And then everyone else tried to convince me that this theatre is haunted."

"Oh…" Christine lowered her eyes. "But it's not. The Opera Ghost, he…" She shook her head.

"What?" Jacqueline asked, half in confusion, half in curiosity.

"He's not real," Christine finished, very softly. "This Opera isn't haunted… but…" She shivered slightly and wrapped her arms about herself.

"But?" Jacqueline asked now with concern, and she took a step closer to the trembling Christine.

Christine looked up again to meet the girl's eyes. "Don't go into the cellars. Never go into the cellars."

"Oh?" Jacqueline glanced about for someplace she might offer for Christine to sit down.

"Yes," Christine breathed. "For they are."

Jacqueline looked back to her again. "They are…?"

"Haunted." Christine felt the threat of teardrops prick at the back of her tired eyes.

"Ah…I…" Jacqueline shifted nervously. "Are you quite all right? You seem…"

Christine shook her head and leaned more heavily against the wall, and sighed, "I am ill…I think…I am not well. But it is nothing. All I need is rest. I may not be at rehearsal for a few more days…"

Jacqueline nodded quickly. "Of course." Her smile was almost too charming then. "I would say I supposed that would make your understudy happy…But she is far too sweet to be the type to think thoughts such as that."

Christine nodded and said softly, "She is only ever compassionate and caring." But she could not help but wonder then if Jacqueline herself, despite her never-ceasing softness, was the type to think thoughts such as that…

"You are pale," Jacqueline said with concern. "You don't look well… Will you need help in getting home? I could walk with you…"

"Thank you." Christine shook her head. "But I will take a cab…" Then she pushed herself away from the wall to stand solidly, which she did for almost a full moment before swaying as the sudden dizziness of the movement claimed her.

Jacqueline gasped and stepped to Christine's side, catching her firmly by the arm in fear that the lady might fall. Christine caught the wall again with her other hand and breathed slowly until the faintness passed. Then she turned slightly and tried again to smile a little at the concerned girl who held her up.

"I just need to rest," she assured her. "I will be fine."

Jacqueline kept her hold of Christine's arm for a few more moments and patted her wrist comfortingly. "Yes… You must be under a great deal of stress…"

Christine nodded and brushed a hand across her forehead, smoothing back her hair.

"Oh!" Jacqueline gasped softly.

Christine turned her gaze to follow the other girl's and saw that Jacqueline's hands on her wrist had found the little silver pendant that peeked out between Christine's glove and sleeve.

Christine flushed slightly and withdrew her arm, clasping her own hand about her wrist.

"So they do call you that then," Jacqueline smiled. "_Songbird_... It is very beautiful," she nodded to the pendant now concealed by Christine's gloved fingers.

"It's…" Christine glanced down at it, turning it slightly. _Songbird_... "Yes… It is…" She then met the girl's eyes again but added suddenly, "I am sorry, but I must go!" And without even leaving a moment to say a goodbye, Christine turned and continued quickly on her way to the exit, leaving a mystified Jacqueline behind, alone in the dim hallway.

Once out of the Opera, Christine used the last of her strength to hail a cab and then sank back into its seat, saying with only just enough volume for the driver to hear, "Rue Notre Dame-des Victories…"

It was as she approached the doorstep of her home on the Rue Notre Dame-des Victories that Christine realized she did not have her key… In fact, she had absolutely nothing in her possession save for the clothes she wore which were not even her own, but those that Erik had provided for her. The bell she rang was answered by her very surprised serving maid who at once ushered the pale and shivering Christine into the small, dark sitting room, all the while pressing her with improper questions.

Christine could only answer with a shake of her head and a request for something warm to drink. The maid hurried off and Christine remained seated on the settee for several long moments, doing nothing but staring at the wallpaper until she suddenly remembered herself and rose again, rushing at once to the door of her mama's room.

She entered quietly in case her invalid benefactress might be asleep, but stopped short in the doorway at the sight that greeted her within.

Mama Valerius was not only awake, but also seeming to be greatly enjoying herself in the company of the young Vicomte de Chagny. Both turned to look with utmost shock to the door upon Christine's entrance and the vicomte rose at once from where he sat by his elderly friend's bedside.

The good woman gasped in almost child-like joy and her bright eyes sparkled as she pressed her hands together. "Oh, Christine! Monsieur de Chagny and I were just speaking of you and now here you are! Come and kiss me. How I have missed you!"

Christine blushed slightly and her eyes darted to Raoul.

He greeted her properly then, but only said in a soft murmur, "Mademoiselle…"

"Monsieur," Christine nodded to him, hesitating a moment, but then made her way to her mama's side and returned the old woman's eager embrace, giving her the kiss she had requested. "I have missed you too…"

"Oh, don't put on airs for me," Mama Valerius laughed. "I can't imagine you have so much as given two thoughts about me while you were with _him_."

Christine reddened and she pulled away. "Mama, I have told you not to mention it… Never speak of it aloud. Please…"

From the corner of her eye, she saw Raoul shift in response, and she purposefully looked away before she saw any more.

Madame Valerius laughed again and caught Christine's hand, pressing it warmly. "Well, now. Then may I mention the fact that I do believe Monsieur de Chagny has been lingering about a ill old woman's bedside for far longer than he can possibly reasonably take pleasure in in the delicate hope that tonight might be the night you would return home?"

"Madame…" Raoul's voice sounded as if it was doing all it could to reflect good nature.

"Well can't I speak of anything?" she sulked lightheartedly.

"Mama, please," Christine said again with tentative faintness.

"I did wish to speak with you, Christine," he said softly.

She shook her head, pressing a hand to her weary brow. "I…"

"Oh, Christine," Mama Valerius cut in. "It could not harm you to give the gentleman but a few moments of your time," she said with a gentle wink of her bright eye. "I am certain even _he _could not object to that. And Monsieur de Chagny has been waiting so anxiously."

Both of the young people blushed at her words but neither of them acknowledged Mama Valerius's illicit reference to the mysterious _he, _and Christine only nodded slowly, keeping her eyes downcast.

"It has been a pleasure to visit with you again, madame," Raoul nodded to her politely before he followed Christine out into the sitting room and the maid took their place at the old woman's bedside. But once they were alone, Raoul commanded Christine's attention with the most heartfelt of gazes.

"Christine, I… _You_…"

She turned away from him. "Raoul, if you so much as mention it, I will not speak another word to you. I have warned you not to spy on me."

He shook his head. "No, Christine… But that is not why I am here. I want to speak to you about _her."_

Christine turned back to him quickly, her eyes widening, and she shook her head. "Her?"

Raoul nodded and reached into his pocket, withdrawing a small packet of papers. "Christine, you must tell me…"

Christine glanced about the room nervously. "Tell you…?"

He caught her gently by the arm to pull her attention back to him, looking into her fearful eyes severely. "Yes. Elainoire Pinson. _Her_."

She shook her head fiercely then, practically hissing, "No, no, no."

"No?" He released her arm and unfolded one of the papers he held. It was newsprint. He turned it over then to show Christine the picture—the perfectly drawn portrait of a very alive little girl.

Christine gasped, "No…"

Raoul stepped closer to her, lifting the paper before her eyes as Christine's hands remained limp at her sides. "No?" he asked again. "Tell me no, and I will never mention this again. Tell me this isn't the child you say you found dead in the cellars below the Opera's stage."

Christine shook her head and stammered, unable to speak.

"Tell me this isn't her."

"Oh, Raoul!" she suddenly sobbed, and she pressed her hands to her face, unable to look at the picture a moment longer. "It is! It is, it is, it is! She… Oh!"

And as she groaned in anguished despair, Raoul quickly tucked the clippings away again and took her gently in his arms to sit down with her upon the settee.

"It's her!" Christine continued to sob. "It is! It was… She's… She's not… Oh!"

"Christine," Raoul soothed. "I am sorry… Please don't cry…"

She pulled back from him, meeting his eyes suddenly. "Raoul, what do you know? You must tell me everything you know! You must…"

He leaned toward her. "And you must tell me everything as well."

"Please…"

He nodded. "I…" But then he stopped abruptly as they both jumped where they sat and turned at the creaking of a door behind them.

Christine lifted a finger to his lips, silencing him before he could begin speaking again, and she whispered, "But not here."

"Christine…" he murmured.

"There is the park nearby," she said in an even softer whisper. "Where we can be alone."

"Oh, Christine…" he barely breathed.

She stood then, either ignoring his reaction or not noticing it at all, and she moved to go outside. He gathered his hat and followed her at once. And neither of them spoke another trembling word until they were in the snow-covered park and rather alone in a still golden evening of the post-twilight.

"The air is so still," Raoul said softly to himself as he glanced about the small park at the distanced bundled figures enjoying the last of the dusk. Most were on their way out and none so near enough to overhear any words he or Christine might speak.

He turned back to glance again at Christine then as he felt her apprehensive tug at his sleeve.

"Let me see," she whispered. "Let me see her again."

With his free hand, Raoul reached once more for the papers in his pocket. "I know I promised not to mention this again, but there have been articles, Christine," he began. "After I saw the one in the Epoque yesterday after we spoke, I looked back through the previous days' papers and found there has been one almost every day since the day you first told me of this. I would have never paid them any mind if it had not been for what you told me. People are talking about it everywhere too. What they're saying, Christine…"

She tugged again, the high pitch of her whisper all the more desperate. "Please, let me see…"

He sighed softly as he looked into her anxious blue eyes for a moment, the paper clippings crinkling in the fold of his hand.

She pressed her lips together and, unable to wait another moment more, reached to his hand, taking the folded papers from him. She turned away from him slightly and immediately found the picture. Clutching its edges between her hands so tightly that the thin paper trembled, she stared down at it in such paralyzed fixation in the dim light of the park lamp that the monochrome of the rendering soon swam and she could have sworn she saw the shades of blue and gold and pink and white.

She felt Raoul move edgily behind her and she jumped, dropping the papers onto the snow-covered path. He stooped at once to retrieve them before they could become too wet, and Christine wrapped her arms about herself under the warmth of her cloak.

Raoul brushed faint droplets from the clippings. "It's not her."

Christine was too stiff to even shake her head in denial. "No. It is her. It is her in every detail."

He met her eyes again. "It is her sister."

Christine gasped, "Her…?"

He nodded. "Helene Pinson." He flipped through the papers to find the article that was meant to accompany the picture. "Who has been absolutely inconsolable since the abrupt, mysterious, and sinister disappearance of her twin sister, Elainoire."

He offered the article to Christine, but she did not unfold her arms to take it. She moved closer to Raoul again, leaning over slightly to peer at it, but the words swam before her vision.

"Elainoire…" she stammered.

Raoul waited a moment, but then withdrew the article, scanning it for her. "Their fifth birthday is next week. The Marquis de Pinson and his family have raised the value of the reward they have been offering for the safe return of their beloved child." His eyes roved over a few more lines. "But this says nothing new that the older articles had not mentioned." He flipped through them again to find the first one.

"The Marquis de Pinson!" Christine gasped suddenly.

Raoul looked up to meet her eyes again. "Yes."

"They were patrons of the Opera! Until…"

Raoul nodded.

"The disagreement. And they withdrew their patronage… The management was most offended. It was all anyone could talk about for a week last month…"

Raoul nodded again. "I heard of it from my brother. They had been friends, but now Philippe refuses even to speak of him or his wife."

"Their daughter…" Christine shivered and stepped to Raoul's side where he stood under the snow-filled bare branches of a plum tree that grew next to the path.

He put an arm around her back but looked down to the article he had uncovered. "This was the first. A report the day after her disappearance. It reads that there had not yet been a ransom note, but the reward offered was already substantial. The second one was published after still no notice of any kind had been received and the reporter gives these possibilities… The police suspect more than an accident. Certainly the child has been a victim of foul play considering all the family's recent new enemies…"

"Two little girls went out to play," Christine read the headline aloud in a trembling whisper. "Only one returned."

Raoul's eyes found the article she'd noticed.

She looked up to him. "Why were they alone?" she demanded. "So young… Who could ever leave them alone?"

He shook his head. "They were with their nurse, taking a walk by the river that day she disappeared when the weather was warmer than it has been and the snow had melted the night before. The old woman stopped to rest on a bench. They quote her as saying she closed her eyes for but a moment upon two little girls and opened them upon only one. She has of course since been relieved of her duties. When they questioned the sister all she would say was that she was the one counting. She is too young to understand…"

"They were playing a game," Christine gasped.

Raoul sighed and pressed his hand a little more firmly against Christine's back. "A game of hide and seek that has yet to end it seems." He then folded the papers and looked down to her most seriously. "Or has it?"

She turned away from him. "The air does not feel so still now…"

"Christine, I have told you what I know. Now it is your turn."

She shook her head and pulled the hood of her cloak up over her hair. "I don't know what happened to her. I don't know how she died. I…" But she did know how! "I don't know _why_…"

He took her by the arm again. "But they do not know she is dead, Christine. Her family still hopes that she might be alive. They… We must tell the police, Christine. I know you said you…lost her, but they must know at least as much as we do."

She looked back to him quickly. "No! They will investigate…"

He frowned. "And why shouldn't they? If there is something you're not telling me…"

"No, no," she continued to shake her head, but instead of pulling away from him, she moved closer so that she might see him better in the lamplight reflected by the snow. "There is nothing more I can tell you. I swear to you, Raoul, I do not know where she is. There is nothing I can do. Please… The only thing I can tell you is I… She…"

"What?" He pressed her arm where he held her.

"Nothing," she whimpered suddenly. "There is nothing I can tell you. I can no longer even separate the reality from the nightmare… I don't know what is real anymore, I don't… I…" And then her tears began to fall once more.

"Christine…" Raoul glanced about the dark park to see who shared their lamp-lit path, but there was no one, and so he took Christine into his arms and bestowed upon her every ounce of comfort that was in his power.

"She haunts me…" Christine's burning tears felt about to crystallize on her cheek where she pressed against the rough wool of his coat. "She will not leave my mind… Whenever I am in that room, I feel her there."

"What room?" Raoul's soothing hold about her tightened gently.

"She calls to me," Christine did not answer him. "She comes to me and she _came _to me."

"Dreams," Raoul whispered.

"Too real for dreams, Raoul." She turned her face where it was against his shoulder to meet his eyes, the vaporous cloud of his breath for a moment obscuring her vision. She spoke very softly then as her trembling lips were very close to his, which were set so perfectly in his warm and handsome face. "I don't know what she wants from me… I don't know what she is trying to tell me. I don't know where she is anymore… He…"

"_He?_" Raoul stiffened and those lips of his set into a firm line.

Christine turned her face away again.

"What does _he_ have to do with this?"

"Nothing," she whispered. "He only ever does as I ask. I only asked… I wanted to know how… And now I know who… But I don't know _why._" She clung to Raoul then with sudden fierceness. "_Why _has she come to me, Raoul? What does she want from me?"

He did not move. "She is dead, Christine… Or so you say. Her family has the right to know."

"Do you think…" she gasped. "Is that what she wants from me?"

"We might inform the police anonymously," he suggested softly, still making no move to discourage how closely Christine pressed to him.

"Oh…" She nodded. "But…But what if that's not what she wants? What if…?" She released him and began to wring her hands, her teeth chattering in the silence of the park. "Oh, Raoul, I am so cold…"

He reached out to her again. "I will take care of it, Christine. You can be at ease now."

She noticed his hands then and stepped back with sudden modesty. "I shouldn't be out. I was supposed to do nothing but rest in peace."

Raoul frowned at the morbidity of her phrasing and his hands fell to his sides. "Christine…"

She glanced about the park, noticing a new figure in the shadows of the distance. "Lilies don't grow in winter, do they Raoul?" she whispered distractedly.

He almost sighed. "No, Christine, they don't."

She looked back to him again. "Please take me home. I should not have come out again."

He agreed politely and walked with her all the way back to the door of her small apartment. She did not touch him again, but before she could escape inside, he caught her with a word:

"Christine."

She stopped and glanced back to him, but did not release the doorknob.

"Please send for me the moment you need anything. Absolutely anything." He withdrew one of his cards and held it out to her. "If you need help. Day or night, any hour, I will come to you."

She hesitated a moment, then took the card, nodding. And then she was inside and the door was locked behind her before either of them had even said goodbye.

She tucked the card away to be found again a couple hours later, after Mama Valerius had gone to sleep and the maid had retired for the night. In her nightgown and readied for bed, she sat at the writing desk in her bedroom to study the black script of Raoul's embossed name against the pristine white.

"Help," she murmured to herself. She could not imagine how Raoul could possibly help her, and she considered for a moment tearing up the card and throwing it away before the nosy serving maid might find it…Or worse, Erik. But she could not bring herself to do it. As small as it was, she found it gave her comfort just to have it. She turned it over, her fingers testing the texture of its blank side, and then she picked up her pen and slowly wrote the word "Help" so that it filled up the entire back of the card.

"Help," she read it aloud again to herself, and it was only then that she remembered she had forgotten to say goodbye to Raoul. Had she been cruel? After all he had told her about Elainie…

Elainoire de Pinson… The name did not seem to suit such a little girl. _Elainie…_

She thought again then of the Marquis de Pinson's so recent insulting affair at the Opera and the distasteful events that had led to the withdrawal of his patronage after years of previous devotion. It had all been a grave offence to the Opera as an establishment and he had thereby successfully managed to make an enemy of almost every person connected to it.

Erik, in particular, had been volatile… He had not even tried to hide his anger over the matter from Christine. He had vowed vengeance in her very presence. He had… But then…shouldn't he have known who the child was? Shouldn't he have known, if not the moment he saw her, at least in the days following? So closely connected… How could he not have known? Christine dropped her pen. He must have known! He must have—He had known all along and he had not so much as mentioned a word of it to Christine! He had paraded the front of absolute ignorance, when all along… His vengeance…Oh!

Christine pushed back her stool, standing immediately in the shock of the realization that gripped her. But as her eyes darted about her room, she remembered just where she was and that Erik was nowhere near and would not be for several days at the very least.

She shuddered and wiped nervous perspiration from her brow. It was too warm in her room. She could not breathe! She darted to the window and pushed it open, at once quivering in the night draft that greeted her.

It was too much. All of it. And her weary frame felt as if it were sinking desperately under the weight. She was drowning in a bathtub of her own fear. Only able to keep herself up until she reached her bed, she collapsed hopelessly and wept herself into a fitful sleep.

Shapeless nightmares gripped her in the shades of blue and gold and pink and white against the black night of death and a silver moon that rippled beneath the river's currents. The stream roared too loudly, the wind blew too coldly, and the bathtub would not stop overflowing its bloodstained waters.

This time, when she screamed herself awake, it took her several very long moments before she understood that she was not in Erik's house in the Louis-Philippe bed.

She was shivering and she glanced to the window she had left open. She jumped as she saw something white move across it.

"No! Leave me alone!" she choked and she pushed herself to sit up completely in her bed.

The curtain. She shivered all the more. It was only the white curtain, stirred by the breeze. She rose and crossed to close the window again, but took a few moments to glance out to the street. It had begun to snow with the soft gentleness that made one forget that winter could ever be harsh. A cab passed in the street and for a moment she thought she heard the sound of laughter, but then it was gone again. There was a lone figure moving in the direction of the park and a stray dog nosed near a lamppost.

Christine sighed and closed the window, but as she did, the white card fell from where it had been tucked under the silver chain at her wrist. She bent to pick it up, turning it over both ways.

"Help," she whispered and then smiled nervously to herself before turning back to the room.

Elainie smiled back at her.

The card's corners pressed so sharply into Christine's palm, she would have wondered if they had broken the skin had she not been instantly paralyzed.

"Oh…" she stammered.

Elainie's smile fell and she tilted her head slightly, golden curls falling over the bare pink shoulder that was swathed in nothing but the white sheet that she held wrapped about her like a Grecian dress.

Christine felt her tears again. "Why...? _Why?"_

The little girl's blue eyes blinked as if she did not understand, but she seemed to already be moving closer to Christine.

Christine took a step back. "I wanted to say goodbye," she whispered. "I wanted… He would not let me… You… Please…"

Elainie stopped midstep and her little child's brow knit suddenly in the most tormented anguish.

"No," Christine breathed and she moved back again to where she had been. "I'm not running from you… Please, tell me why."

The little girl's hands fumbled with the folds of the sheet that now seemed uncomfortably tangled about her and her head fell as tears began to pour from her eyes and pool about her feet, soaking the edges of the sheet that trailed across the floor.

"No," Christine could barely speak. "Don't cry… I… I just wanted to say goodbye."

Elainie's features could no longer be seen for the strands of hair that fell across her downturned face as she continued to weep with silent violence. Christine noticed then that the hair too was soaking up the tears… In fact, the child's entire form had become drenched.

"You'll freeze!" Christine gasped. "You'll catch your death! You'll… No… It was in your _brain_… But no… Erik…"

At the mention of his name, Elainie's head shot up again and a scream caught in Christine's throat.

The now dripping hair had fallen away in clumps and a dark line circled the girl's entire scalp. Her sunken eyes bored out from deep sockets and her pink lips had become blue and shriveled beneath hollow cheeks and a crumbling nose. Her mouth dropped open, revealing the teeth that dangled in shrunken gums, and the sheet about her had already begun to soak through with blood.

This time, Christine's scream rang through the entire house and she fled the room with a slam of the door that could have woken the dead.

"Holy mother in heaven help me!" Mama Valerius's fearful shouts from beyond her own bedroom door called out to her, but Christine had no voice to answer and no mind but to run out the front door, barefoot into the snow.

She kicked up the soft powder that had been slowly gathering and droplets melted against the burning flesh of her ankles. A cab was passing at the street and she ran to stop it. As it already held passengers, the diver at first made no move to slow for Christine who had already spooked the horses with her white gown and windblown hair and they whinnied against the whip.

"Please!" she cried, and the driver, now concerned, stopped his carriage and peered down at the shivering Christine.

She thrust Raoul's card up to him, choking, "Help! Please!"

He took it and glimpsed the name. "Mademoiselle," he said with troubled doubtfulness as he glanced back in the direction of his passengers.

Christine stumbled backwards towards her doorstep, wrapping her shaking arms about herself and trying to see him through the strands of hair that tangled about her face and stuck to the dried cracks in her lips.

"Hurry!" was all she managed and then she turned away, staggering to the shelter of the doorframe where she realized once more that she was not in possession of her key.

But the sound of a whip and hoof beats behind her. The cab was gone.

She lifted a hand to the bell, but her fingers shook too much to press it at the thought of what was waiting for her inside. She began to sob again and could do nothing else then but lean heavily and helplessly against the door.

"Christine!" The reproachful voice snapped through her and abruptly finished her weeping.

She whirled about to see Erik's dark shape against the falling snow approach the step. She did not bother to wonder at the fact that he was at her doorstep on the Rue Notre Dame-des Victories in the middle of the night, for she was very glad that he was there just now, and she flew at once into his arms.

He responded stiffly, but she only clung to him all the more fiercely.

"Never leave me alone again!" she sobbed. "Please! Please, I cannot escape!"

"Hush Christine," he said as he pulled the folds of his heavy cloak about her against the softly falling snow and the cold midnight air.

"Please, Erik! Please! Whenever you leave me alone, it happens! I cannot bear it. I am going mad! Please, please promise never to leave me alone again!" she sobbed feverishly. "Please!"

He delicately brushed the drops of melting snowflakes from her hair, bending protectively over her as she refused to release him from her desperate embrace.

"I won't, Christine," he said very softly.

"Please!"

"I promise you…"

She buried her face against the strange warmth of his clothing in the darkness beneath the enclosure of his cloak, and her lips parted helplessly several times before she could speak again, her hysterical words muffled.

"Ghost! The ghost isn't haunting the opera! The ghost isn't haunting the Louis-Philippe room! The ghost is haunting _me!_ Me! Me, me, me! Haunting _me_!"

"I am here, Christine," Erik said in a strangely even tone, and she suddenly became aware of the sound of his heartbeat.

"She's… Oh, Erik! Erik!" Christine pulled away from him slightly so that she might wipe at her tears, and as she did, she was able to look up to meet his eyes that burned down at her through the dark of the night. They glowed as two frozen stars in the black sky, timeless among the drifting snowflakes that disappeared against the black fabric of the hood of his cloak. In those shadows, the features of his mask were indistinguishable and it was as if he had no face at all surrounding those two eyes of ageless fire, and his hood was filled with nothing but the dark air of the night.

It was then that, with crashing clarity, all that had been revealed to her about Elainie's death since she had last seen Erik came flooding back to the forefront of her thoughts, drowning her in its overwhelming realization.

She froze, though she shook brutally with the burning need to move, but her bare feet had become numb on the stone steps and Erik's hold on her, she realized, had become as viselike as marble.

"You…" she gasped. "And she…she… _You!_"

His hand clasped over her mouth before she could say anything more. "Hush Christine," he said again. "Sleep now."

She tried to say something. She tried to shake her head. She tried to pull away. But she could do nothing but inhale the faint scent of the leather of his glove. Christine felt his other hand press against her back andthe next whisper blew through her like the hollowness of the wind—the voice of the night itself.

_"Goodbye."_

And then she knew no more.


	9. The Reality

**The Reality**

The wind was thick with the soft heat of summer, rich with the secrets it collected as it blew through the silent leaves of the forest. It made no sound, but Christine knew it was there; she could feel it stir her golden curls, see it bend the blades of grass. In fact, the only sounds at all in the woods that night were the gentle running of the stream and her own little voice as she sang out a night song to the life she plucked from each of the petals of a flower before she dropped them one by one into the lovely rolling waters.

"Goodbye, little flower," she sang. "The river will take you to heaven." And she absently swung the heels of her new black boots against the small mossy ledge where she sat above the water. "Float, float, dream, die, pretty flowers go to heaven…"

"What a pretty song." And suddenly she was no longer alone.

She tilted her head back to look up at the dark, robed shape that towered above her in the night, nothing more than a looming blackness against the faint outlines of branches, but she was not afraid.

"Songbird," she said, nodding with certainty. "That is what they call me." And then her attention returned easily to the half-stripped flower between her fingers.

"But what is your name?" She could feel him move behind her as he spoke. Was he coming closer or backing away?

"Elainoire…" Christine smiled. "My name is Elainie." She watched the last petal float off along into darkness until it was lost among the curves of the stream. She dropped the stem in after it, then pushed herself up to stand, making certain to brush all dust from her new pink dress.

_"Elainie."_ The sudden wind that whipped through the night all but swallowed his word.

But she liked the wind and she only nodded again as she turned around to him, her head dropping back in attempt to seek his face in the dark. "What is your name?"

He seemed to move around her, but closer or further away? "Don't you know?"

She shook her head and turned it to look back to the river. Suddenly she was not so sure. "Did I?"

"I have been waiting for you."

She felt his hand on her shoulder then. The bone white fingers were so long that she could feel that they stretched nearly across her small chest. But she was still not afraid.

She shivered for other reasons. "You were?"

"Oh yes."

She sighed. Slowly. "Me too…" She shivered again and then his other arm gently encircled her little waist from behind and she felt herself lifted off her feet.

"I'm sorry I can't remember your name," she whispered as her cheeks flushed. Perhaps now she was beginning to be just a little bit afraid.

"It doesn't matter," he breathed as he slipped his other arm behind her knees and cradled her child's body to his black robed chest. "I do not want you any less."

Christine tried to turn in his arms to see his face, but she could not seem to manage it. "But you were not supposed to come for me… I…" And now she was afraid.

"Why not?" he asked so simply as he began to carry her along the bank of the stream, floating just above the edge.

The warmth of the summer night was gone. "Where is your blade? Aren't you supposed to have your staff? You…"

He shook his head that she could not see. "What blade?"

"But you always have a blade when you come…" She felt about to cry as her efforts to twist about in his arms continued to prove useless.

She felt him stop then and the water was the only sound for several moments before he spoke again his hollow words.

"Perhaps you have me confused with somebody else."

She immediately jerked about and looked at him. "You—"

Eyes of fire smoldered back at her from the hollow recesses of the black hood. He had no face. No face at all. Only the blackness of the night itself. She shivered again. But there was a familiarity in his embrace now that fought against her fear.

"Papa promised we would see angels in France," she whispered.

The eyes of endless fire did not blink, could never be put out.

When he spoke, his voice was the wind again that welled up from depths unknown within him and blew through her skin:

"That is right, my little Songbird. All this time, you have been singing for me."

She clung to him then with that sudden fear that washed over her like the bottomless waters of time, the sudden undeniable understanding that it was she who had called out to him, her own song that had conjured his shape into reality, her own child's curiosity that had sealed her fate.

"Do not fear death," he comforted her with hollow words as he soothed her shaking with his hard hands of bleached bone.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way," she whimpered pitifully.

"I know… Don't cry…"

"I was supposed to be hiding. She's counting. She'll come looking for me…"

"But she will never find you." The sadness in his tone was unmistakable even over the growing roar of the waters beneath her and the wind around her.

"Please!" she sobbed. "Why!"

He only shook his head and held her all the closer. "You are too young to understand."

"Oh!" But then, even through her tears, she suddenly became aware of the sound of the beating of his heart. "Oh…"

She looked up to his face again and this time she was certain she saw something. A black outline within the hood. A darker shade surrounding the burning eyes. Sockets? She reached out to where his face should have been and felt something hard, something stiff. Something that was not flesh or bone, something that was…

_"Songbird!"_

She gasped.

_"Goodbye!" _The wind that carried his voice tore through her and propelled her at once from his arms out into the air above the water.

She reached out to him desperately but she was already falling. He was already rising into the night, and the freezing water was already enveloping her, soaking her new clean dress and ruining her new black boots.

_"You will remember my name…" _She heard his voice once more before the water was all that roared through her mind while the only sight she could fix her eyes upon up through the dark stream was the white of the moon shimmering above, just as if it were only a reflection of itself.

And in those last moments before she died, she did remember his name.

_Death…_

"Erik!" Christine screamed herself awake with the word in a voice that was no child's but her own hoarse and pitiful voice.

"I'm here," he answered immediately from nowhere with the softest of urgency.

Christine yelped again, jumping where she lay and twisting about in the confused haze of lingering nightmare, momentarily becoming entangled in her own white nightgown. Then her eyes found him. He was very close, kneeling so that he was at her level, and she realized she was resting on the couch in the Louis-Philippe room of his house. He had not yet even removed the hood of his winter cloak where the drops of melted snowflakes still lingered, the room was mostly dark, and all she could see were his glowing, yellow eyes.

She screamed again.

"Christine!" His voice was more stern now and he pressed her arm.

She jerked away from him, pushing herself up from the cushions, her eyes desperately scanning the dark corners of the room.

He sighed and sat back, resting an arm across his knee and did not try to touch her again. "You were dreaming. Again. Another nightmare. Another ghost. There is nothing to frighten you here. Just you and I."

"You!" Her eyes snapped back to him and she shrank against the softness of the couch.

"Oh, now do I frighten you?" His concerned tone was becoming more irritated.

Christine began to crawl backwards to the opposite end of the couch. "You! How could you!"

"Frighten you?" He sighed again. "Well, one can hardly help—"

"You killed her!" she shrieked with sudden relentlessness. "Death! Death! Angel of Death! I know your name! You came for her in the night and you killed her!" She sprang from the couch and tumbled to her feet to dart across the room.

Erik turned where he knelt but did not yet rise, his glowing gaze growing into a glare. "Christine!" he snapped.

"You thought I wouldn't recognize you!" she interrupted before he could say anything else. "You thought without your staff and your blade I wouldn't know it was you!"

"Christine!" He was on his feet at once and the black folds of his cloak exploded about him like sudden dangerous nightfall.

"No!" She shrank back against the wall next to the dark hearth, throwing her arms up over her face. But when he was not upon her within a few moments, she lowered them again as they shook violently.

He remained where he stood, his arms folded beneath the cloak, a pillar of darkness amid darkness.

"How could you?" she whimpered now, suddenly barely maintaining the energy to remain standing.

His entire frame stiffened even more. "I only did what you asked of me. I will do anything you ask of me." But there were certainly no favors offered in his tone.

"Did I ask you to come for her! Did I ask you to take her!" Christine's voice cracked with the onset of sobs. "I didn't even know her, but she knows me! She's always known me! And now I cannot escape because of you… you… You!"

"I—"

"Demon! Devil! Apparition! Death!"

He unfolded his arms, and his voice was all the darker, "Really—"

But she would not let him speak and she threw her arms up again. "You cannot come for me without your blade! You cannot! I know who you are! I know your name!"

And this time he was upon her at once, and he pulled her arms away, gripping them fiercely in his black gloved hands. "Christine!"

"You—!"

_"Christine!" _He squeezed her wrists violently enough to make her cease all further words with a gasp. But it lasted only for a second before she began to shriek with sobs. And she shrieked ceaselessly. Even when he released her and took a step away, her hysterics refused to end.

She stumbled back against the hearth again, staring at him and screaming sobbing prayers as her flailing hands found the fireplace poker. Without even thinking, she gripped its handle, pulled it from its rack and swung out at him with a desperate cry.

He caught its iron point in one hand with a solid force that sent a shudder through her entire body. But her hysterics only increased then, and she pulled at it with all her strength, trying to free it from his grip franticly to strike again.

His fingers squeezed only more tightly about the end he held, and then, with a sudden jerk of the iron, he pulled her to him.

Her eyes widened and her mouth opened to scream again, but was silenced before she could by the abrupt sting of the leather of the glove of his other hand as he struck her sharply across the face.

She did not even gasp; she made no sound at all. They both released the fire poker simultaneously and it fell with a clatter against the marble before the hearth.

Erik lifted the hand that had slapped her and pushed back the hood from his head. And then Christine followed his gaze to his other hand, the jagged slash in the soft leather of the glove and the flowing red that had already seeped from a line in the white beneath. He flexed it slowly.

"Oh… Erik," she whispered, and her own shaking fingers rose to touch her face where he had struck her.

He shook his head, and she could have been certain, even in the near dark, that she saw genuine fear in his eyes.

Large, silent tears bubbled from her own eyes then and she threw herself into his arms. But when she did not feel him move at all to embrace her, she moaned and sank to her knees before him, burying her face in her hands. "Erik…"

No response. Silence. But then he put his fingertips under her chin to lift her head again, and when she opened her eyes, she found herself staring directly at the fresh blood in his palm.

"I am only a man, Christine." His voice came from above like the voice of an angel... But not the Angel of Death.

She studied the wound she had caused for a long moment before nodding ever so slightly and squeezing her eyes shut again.

And then he was kneeling before her once more. "You are not going to have any more nightmares."

"But she—"

"Listen to me, Christine. It is over. She is gone. She will not haunt you anymore."

"Oh, Erik…" She opened her eyes weakly to meet his behind his mask.

"Everything I have told you has been the truth, Christine."

"Everything," she breathed.

He only nodded, his gaze never breaking from hers.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and she lifted a hand as if she might touch his mask. "I'm sorry…" But then she lowered it again and instead took his hand in both of hers and very gently began to tug the ruined black glove from his fingers.

"You are not well," he said softly as he closely followed her shaky actions, but made no move to stop her. "That is all."

"I am numb when I wake," she continued, her voice never rising above a breathy whisper. "I am dizzy every time I stand… I fall."

"Christine…"

His long, white fingers curled as she finished removing the glove and set it on the floor alongside their knees. She tucked her own fingertips under his and straightened them slowly.

"You are afraid I've caught pneumonia…" She lifted her other hand as if she might touch the blood, but did not quite. "You are afraid I'll catch my death."

"I will light a fire. I will bring you something warm to drink."

"I don't want to sleep…"

"You don't have to."

"I am afraid."

"I know." And somehow, as he spoke those words, she thought he almost might have said that he was too.

She found herself momentarily holding her breath then as her fingertips slowly slid down from his, past the inside of his knuckles, and almost to his palm where the center had become filled with a small pool of blood as she held it upright. She exhaled then all at once and reached down to take the edge of the hem of her long nightgown where it rumpled about her knees just below their hands, and she lifted it to press against the wound.

He shifted where he knelt, moved as if he meant to speak, as if he meant to stop her, but then he said nothing, did nothing, just watched as the clean white began to soak up the blood.

She dabbed at it gingerly, and then in the brief time after most of the blood was wiped away but before it began to flow again, she pressed a clean fold of the soft flowing fabric against it and pressed her own hand over it tightly, folding her fingers around its back, and holding it there.

"Some things that seemed so important before just don't seem to matter anymore," she murmured. "Not in the same way…"

There was a distinct crack then of the knuckles of Erik's other hand where his fist had been pressing against the floor at his side.

Christine did not flinch, but merely blinked slowly and lifted her eyes to find his again. "Erik…"

"Christine."

She blinked again, even more slowly and leaned toward his mask, just a little closer. "Erik…"

"…Christine…" And his fingers finally curled to wrap around the back of her hand as well.

She lifted her other hand to touch her face as if to brush away a tear that was not there as she exhaled with the faintest of sighs before speaking very softly. "Why did you kill her?"

His grip on her hand was for a moment almost bone-crushing, and then it was gone, the red-stained fabric dropped back across her knees. He clenched that gashed hand into the tightest of fists, and when he spoke, each word was measured with severity. "Christine, I am tired of this."

"It was her father you hated," she continued softly, unaffected. "Why did you take out your anger on her?"

He stood immediately, taking her by the arm with his uninjured hand and pulling her to her feet as well.

"You threw her into the river, Erik. You pushed her right in while she was playing hide and seek where she shouldn't have been. You wanted to punish her father by taking her away from him."

He dragged her brusquely over to the Louis-Philippe bed, only releasing her once at its edge. "Sit," he commanded.

She sat obediently, but did not stop speaking in her sleepwalker's tone. "But you didn't know that when you took her away from him, you gave her to me… When you killed her, she came right to me. You didn't know she would find me that way. You didn't know I would see it all."

He had turned as if to leave the room, but at her last words, he whirled back around to her, leaning over where she sat and gripping her face in one hand. "Don't go anywhere," he snapped, and then he released her again and withdrew towards the door.

She watched him calmly for a moment as he left, but then, just before he left the room, her eyes widened in sudden terror and her hands clenched at the fabric of the nightgown over her knees, drawing it up so that the bloody edges were wet and sticky against her bare shins beneath. "No," she gasped. "You promised never to leave me alone again!"

He paused and turned to glance back at her over his shoulder. Then after a brief clenching and unclenching of the first that squeezed tiny droplets of blood onto the carpet, he turned back to her completely with an unmistakable air of helplessness that sent a chill of terrible fear down her spine.

"No…" She began to shake her head, slowly at first but soon quickening almost violently. "No, it's true!" she shrieked, and her fingers twisted at the cloth of her nightgown, almost tearing it. "I saw it! I felt it! I was there!"

"But I wasn't," he said softly, for the moment remaining by the door.

"No!" She would not stop shaking her head.

He turned slightly, pensively, looking away so that he could not see her, and with one hand, unfastened the cloak from about his shoulders and dropped it onto the chair by the door. And then after another moment's thought, he looked up again and crossed the room to the bathroom.

"Erik!" she cried desperately, though she did not move from where he had planted her. "Erik!"

But he did not answer, and in the bathroom took his time to wash the blood from his palm and dry it with a hand towel, which he kept clenched in his fist when he then returned to the bedroom.

"Erik!" She was sobbing again. "Just tell me why! That's all I want to know! I need to know _why!_"

"Why?" he suddenly snapped, stopping where he stood. "Why? Why!"

"Please!"

And then he was before her again, once more gripping her fiercely by the arm and this time dragging her straight from the room. She stumbled along the hall behind him, attempting to grab on to his shoulder with her other hand for support as he propelled her straight back towards the laboratory door.

"Erik! Please!"

"_Why!_"

Inside, he pushed her down into a low chair just before the now empty cold steel table.

"I will show you why!"

She rubbed at her bleary eyes, blinded by the staggering light of the room as he released her and disappeared through the door in the back. She could see absolutely nothing at first, but then, just as the harshness began to come into focus, he emerged again, and slammed something down on the high table directly before her face where she sat that made her jump with the earsplitting crack of solid glass against steel.

"_This_ is why!" he cried, and he snatched her hands from her face, forcing her forward so that she had no choice but to see what was there in that heavy glass jar.

A pink and grey human brain, just the right size for a child, bounced and bobbed where it floated in sickeningly dirty green liquid that nauseated her with its smell even through the seal of the container. Straggled tendons fluttered like the tentacles of a sea creature as the black of dead blood vessels bulged and popped through the tissue.

A flip of his hand rotated the jar so that she had a perfect view then of the growth on one side marring the smooth young wrinkles. It oozed from the dull pinkish color, the head of a bulging yellow-white worm drinking in the stagnant, stinking swamp of the fluid, a parasite feasting on the very mind of a child, devouring her from the inside out.

"She died from a tumor in the brain, Christine. That is _why._ That is all."

Christine gagged and her hands jerked free from Erik's grip to cover her mouth, but she could not look away.

"This is all I know. This is all _you_ know. _Everything_ else is _only in your mind."_

She shook her head slowly, but she still said nothing. Her fingers crept up her face to cover her nose. Her vision was already swimming from the smell, but she still did not look away.

"I was not there. You were not there." His hand gripped the jar again. "_This _is reality. Your nightmares will never be."

But as he moved to take it away, her hands shot out and stopped his arm. Her fingertips dug sharply into his sleeve and she turned her face up to meet his eyes.

"That's hers?" she whispered. "That's really her?"

He nodded stiffly.

"Oh, Erik… Oh…" She released his arm slowly and sank back where she sat as a gradually heavy wave of acceptance overpowered her. "Oh… Oh... I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry… Oh…"

And then she began to weep, but he was not alarmed, for they each knew, she was finally weeping for reality.


	10. Needing

**Needing**

Christine's tears had long exhausted themselves and she sat now, curled in the same hard, simple chair where Erik had deposited her. Her feet tucked up onto the seat and her arms wrapped around her knees where her face was buried against the harsh brightness of the lights, she was very aware of the sound of her own breathing as it sank into the still damp folds of her stained nightgown.

The table shifted before where she sat and she slowly lifted her head to look up, stretching the stiffness her neck had become.

Erik had settled himself across from her. His injured hand was cleaned and upturned on the cold metal tabletop; he pricked the flesh with a short, curved needle and then tugged gently upwards the thin, dark thread that pulled closed the pit of red, stitching together jagged white lips over that little, bloody mouth of a wound.

She stared at him silently until he had repeated the exercise three times before she spoke, her soft words crackling in the back of her throat like burnt scraps of paper:

"Does it hurt?"

He paused, the fingertips holding the needle suspended in midair above his hand, and lifted his head to turn and simply stare at her for several very long moments. Then without replying otherwise, he turned back and resumed what he had been doing.

But she continued to watch him too intently for comfort until finally, jerking the thread a bit too roughly, he answered shortly, "No, Christine. No, it does not hurt."

She winced and glanced away. She waited until the soft snip of surgical scissors recalled her blank mind to the world of thought, and then she released the tension in the grip of her fingers and allowed her feet to slide from the chair's edge back to the floor, which she found struck her as too very cold. She took her time to smooth out her nightgown over her legs before she looked to Erik again, just as he was finishing winding a long gauze bandage about his hand.

She moved around the table to him. If he noticed her, he made no motion of it. Slowly, she sank to kneel next to his chair and then reached up and clasped the arm of his bandaged hand. She felt him jerk slightly, but he did not pull away as he turned where he sat to look down at her. She slid her hands down his sleeve and took his hand in both of hers, gently by the sides; she did not want to hurt him.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. But the way she stared, so focused at the bandage over his palm, it was rather as if she were apologizing to his hand than to him.

He sighed as if he meant to speak, but he remained silent.

She turned his hand over and pressed her tearstained cheek to the bandage across the back of it.

"Erik?" she whimpered.

He shifted where he sat and she almost thought he had moved closer to her until she realized he had pulled slightly away.

"What do you want from me, Christine?" He sighed again. "Do not ask for forgiveness, for you know there is no need."

She shook her head vaguely, her face brushing against the soft fibers of the bandage, and then she was silent once more for a very long time before she spoke again:

"Erik?" she said more calmly then. "Do you think I am mad?"

"No Christine," he said as the tips of his fingers shivered in the faintness of her breath, and flexing slightly, one of them brushed her lips. "No more so than I."

Her lips parted again, but this time her eyelids only fell shut.

"Are you tired?" His other hand had begun to move towards her face.

She opened her eyes again and tilted her head back slightly to look up at him. "I don't want to go to sleep."

He seemed to freeze. "What do you want to do?"

And suddenly Christine was very aware that just then he would grant her absolutely anything she asked of him. The intensity of his gaze alone recalled a blush to her cheeks and she gingerly released her captive hold on his poor hand.

"Oh…" was all she managed.

He took her by the chin and leaned down to her, bringing his mask very close to her face. "Why do I feel I know what you must want?"

She began to shake her head again and amazingly felt once more the sting of tears. "I'm sorry…"

He clasped her face a bit more firmly. "I do not think you are mad, Christine. Fixated. Obsessed."

"But I saw—"

"Delusional. But not mad."

"But…" she whimpered, helpless to move in his grip. "How will it end?"

"That is just the thing." He leaned a little closer over her. "It must end. What will give you that closure? What is it you are needing to set your tormented mind at ease?"

She tried to turn her face away, but he would not let her. "I want to see her," she murmured. "I just want to say goodbye…"

He relaxed his hold on her, but his caress on her face as he pulled his hand away was most deliberate. "Then you shall say goodbye."

She shivered and looked up to him as he straightened in his chair. "Erik…"

"The sooner, the better." He pressed the fingertips of his two hands together. "If you are certain that is what you need."

She nodded slowly and shivered again.

He studied her for several very silent moments before he stood, and bending to take her by the arms, he lifted her to her feet.

She looked down at his hands on her arms, but as her vision momentarily blurred as a brief wave of dizziness claimed her, she could only half listen to his words.

"Get dressed," he said. "And I will take you to her."

"I…" She met his eyes again.

He looked away and turned her in the direction of the door before releasing her. "Go on."

She did, but as she did, she shivered a third time.

She was almost finished dressing when she heard him knock softly at her door. He entered before she could even find the voice to respond and she watched him cross, without giving her more than a glance, to where his glove was still lying on the floor. She had completely forgotten it was there. He bent, picked it up, and then it disappeared. He turned to her then, folding one arm behind his back.

"Not ready yet?" he said, as if speaking only to himself. "Perhaps you do not really want to go."

She shook her head slowly, keeping her eyes fixed on his form. "I left my boots at home…"

"You have six pairs in the wardrobe." He went to it and pulled out the bottom drawer to show her that she actually had eight.

She stared at them and said nothing, so he took out a pair himself and brought them to her. As he approached, she took several steps back, and would have taken more, but the chair by the door came in contact with the back of her skirts.

He paused, studying her expression for a moment, then he sighed. "Sit down."

She did, but she looked away. "Am I mad Erik?" she began, her soft voice trembling, "Or aren't you being rather forward with me…"

He knelt before her and set one of the boots down next to her skirt. "If you cannot take care of yourself, Christine child, then I will do it for you."

He placed the other on one of her stockinged feet without managing to touch her and then proceeded to lace it up with only one hand almost too quickly for her eyes to follow. She watching him then repeat the act with the second boot as his bandaged hand remained folded across his knee. Finished, he stood, and her eyes followed him as he rose before her, her own hands clutched tightly in her lap. He stared down at her silently and she could decipher no expression beyond his mask, his eyes completely dark and unintelligible. She began to feel as if she were being watched by a specter, something not of this world, something out of a nightmare.

"Erik…" she whispered. "Say something."

"You are sitting on my cloak."

Her entire frame trembled, but she stood, too quickly, for she was momentarily dizzy, and stepped to the door. She steadied herself against the pane and watched him as he plucked up the cloak and put it on just as swiftly with only one hand.

"I know," he said, "you left yours at home as well. I daresay you left a lot there. But I think you ought to know better by now that, here, you will never be without what you need."

She tore her eyes from him and went to retrieve it herself, and then found him again at the opened door to the lake.

She looked up to him as she passed through. "Where is she?"

"With the dead," he answered gravely, and he shut up the door behind them, leaving them in the much dimmer light of the catacombs. He held a lantern that had appeared, as it always did, from some hidden nook, and opening the flaps fully, he offered them as much illumination as he might.

"Will we take the boat?" she asked.

He had begun to walk with her along the stone bank. "And cross out of the underworld? No, Christine."

She walked along with him in silence then but soon began to feel something familiar or strange about it as they went. She realized suddenly that she had not been walking with him like this in more than a week, when they had been accustomed to taking their outings almost daily. Nothing at all had been the same since that day she took their walk alone. All at once she found herself aching terribly for a return to the way things had once been.

"I have missed the fresh air," she said softly.

He glanced at her.

She met his eyes. "The out of doors. It's healthy."

She imagined he smiled beneath his mask. She imagined he laughed. Perhaps he did.

With easy steadiness, he brought her through the dark winding passages, where even the eerie blue light of the lake did not reach, and out again to a narrow gallery lined with alcoves, some open, some barred by rusted doors. She could hear the sound of running water again, and though she had never been here before, she knew where they must be.

Erik shone his lamp along the doors. "The communards left many dead to rot in these dungeons, and they rest here still."

"This is where you've brought her?" Christine stopped, agape.

He glanced back at her as he continued on. "Not good enough for her? Even among the dead, she is little more than a butchered shell of a corpse."

She glanced about the edges of the light and her eyes at once found the dusty bones of telltale tortures, the grinning skulls of unblessed burials. Gasping, she caught up to Erik at once and dared not again stray a second form his side.

"The bones in your father's graveyard did not bother you this way." He led her around a corner.

"God does not dwell down here," she whispered, and her fingers dug into his sleeve as she pursed her face against the sickly sweet smell of the depths that began to become more obvious as they progressed.

He stopped and handed her a handkerchief, which she at once pressed over her nose and mouth.

"She is there," he gestured, and Christine turned around to face a door that stood half ajar.

She froze. Erik waited a moment then stepped around her and pulled open the door fully. "This is what you wanted. This is what you need. I only ever do what you ask of me, Christine."

Without removing the handkerchief, she nodded. She moved to take a step to join him at the door, but then halted, looking up to him, and speaking with muffled words, "Are her eyes opened or closed?"

Erik stared down at her for a moment, then slowly glanced over his shoulder into the room, and then looked back to her again. "They are closed."

She kept her eyes on him as she stepped to take his arm with her free hand in a fervent grip of anticipation. "Erik…" she whispered. "Like a rag doll?"

He leaned back slightly against the door. "Yes, Christine. Like any ordinary cadaver."

She peered through the doorway, vaguely discerning a pile of white laid out on a slab of stone. She exhaled very slowly, and then with a short nod of her head, she tightened her grip on Erik's arm and stepped across the threshold, bringing him with her into that small dungeon tomb.

He remained silent and kept his lantern aloft so that Christine might see as well as she could as they approached what was left of that dear, little girl. She was covered head to toe in her clean white sheet, or perhaps it was another sheet, for hadn't hers become soaked through with blood? Christine's memory seemed momentarily lost among the clouds of dream or reality. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and forced herself to remember what was real.

"She is here," she whispered to Erik, "All of her?"

He nodded slightly. "Except…"

She nodded as well and very slowly released his arm so that she might take a corner of the sheet, but again she hesitated mid-act at the sight of the silver pendant that swung just below her wrist.

"Will I be frightened?" her voice trembled.

Erik made no response for a moment, but then, instead of speaking, lifted his hand and reached around her to place it over her fingers where she held the cloth. Then they lifted it away together.

Elainie lay on her back, her eyes were closed, and what was left of her golden curls, now dull in the dark, were carefully arranged to hide most of the dark stitching that ran the circumference of her skull. The rest of her face was as Christine remembered it, sweet and sad, and tinted blue and grey with death. Below her neck, the stitches began again, dark as leeches against that ghostly flesh, sealing away every mark of the slaughter Christine had witnessed as well as more she had not even imagined.

Erik's touch fell away and she shivered.

"She ought to be dressed," she said to him softly. "We might do that much for her… And there ought to be flowers."

"Clothing is for the eyes of others," he answered simply, without any tone of disregard. "And flowers are for the smell."

Christine glanced up at him over the brim of the handkerchief. "She would have liked flowers. I know she liked flowers."

"Do you?" he asked, and suddenly she remembered that she was not quite sure what she knew anymore at all.

She looked back down at the child and shook her head slowly. "Her sister might like flowers…"

"Her sister?"

"The Marquis de Pinson has twin daughters… Had…"

"Do not forget to recall, Christine, that he and his family offended you no less than they did me."

She shook her head again, her eyes never leaving the little face. "She never did a thing. Elainie… Elainoire… Songbird… I wish I had known you. I wish I could have saved you…"

Erik remained silent and Christine stepped closer against the stone slab. With the tenderest of touches, she gently traced a finger along the girl's sunken cheek. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I just wanted to say goodbye… I'm so sorry. I should have let you rest in peace… I should have…" Her tears began to drip down against the handkerchief, and so she lifted it to her eyes, letting the puffs of steam from her lips escape into the cold dungeon air. She said nothing else for a few moments as she attempted to recover herself and then she bent to kneel, and bravely relinquishing the handkerchief to fold her hands on the stone, she began to pray.

Erik let her take her time and he did not so much as step away so that no scrape of his shoe might disturb Christine's meditation. Neither of them counted the minutes, but when she looked up again, there were the marks tears that had fallen again and already dried on her ruddy cheeks.

She sighed and her eyes traced the frozen lines of Elainie's face. "Goodbye," she whispered. "Goodbye."

She replaced the sheet then, as it had been before, tucking in its edges as if she were putting the child to bed. She clasped her hands together and looked down at the necklace wrapped about her wrist. She pondered it thoughtfully for a moment, traced its silver chain with a fingertip, but then only looked up and sighed greatly as if she had pushed an entire other world from her shoulders.

"Erik?" she murmured.

"Yes, Christine?"

She glanced up at him behind her and smiled the softest of smiles. "I thought you might have gone…"

"No, Christine."

Her smile spread bittersweetly and she extended both of her hands to him. He took them and lifted her to her feet. Once more, as she rose from where she knelt, the weary giddiness passed over her. Erik studied her expression with silent concern for a moment before he spoke:

"You asked me never to leave you alone again." His fingertips pressed into her palms.

She tilted her head slightly, her golden curls falling over one shoulder. "You've only ever done as I have asked of you…"

He nodded slowly as he looked down at her, but then only squeezed her fingertips with the slightest of pressure before releasing them.

Tearing her eyes from his, she turned back around to face the white sheet again, and she sighed. "Perhaps… Maybe I could pick her just a few flowers… She needs flowers."

"Christine… It is winter."

"I could buy them then… And we wouldn't have to come back in here. We could leave them at the door."

He made no response. Christine thought of how often she received flowers in the winter at the Opera, surely she would be able to bring some down here for the poor, lost, little girl, lying there on that cold stone, under that sparse sheet. But as Christine stared at that sheet, the very distinctness of the shape beneath it began to become more clear to her.

She took a quick step back from it, but at once felt the back of her shoulders bump into Erik's chest, as he still had not moved a step from where he stood. She shivered and she heard his breath at her ear behind the mask as he moved one of his arms gently around her.

"It is time we left this place," he said almost too softly for her to hear despite his closeness.

The faint cloud of her breath came out in a shuddered puff, but she nodded, and she did not resist as he guided her away and back out the door, which he released her in order to close.

"Erik," she murmured as they began to walk back the way they had come, "might I bring her some flowers?"

"Yes, Christine. If you like."

She nodded and pulled the folds of her cloak snugly about her arms. After several moments of walking in silence, she spoke again. "Erik, what time is it?"

He paused and withdrew his watch, holding it up into the light of the lantern. "Almost five o'clock." He turned to glance at her.

She thought for a moment, then said, "I will go in a few more hours then, when the shops are open, and find some nice flowers for her."

He studied her closely from where he stood. "Alone?"

She nodded and then moved to continue walking. He followed her.

Once back in the warmth of his home, they spent the next few hours together in quiet activity that did not lend itself to thoughts of death or ghosts, and so, when the clock struck nine in the morning, Christine found herself feeling quite comfortable with the thought of venturing out to the Parisian streets alone in order to purchase funeral flowers. Erik compliantly took her back across the lake in the boat, which understandably took longer than it usually did, but when he very slowly and carefully helped her out of it, his hand lingered upon hers.

"You are not frightened in the daylight?" he asked again cautiously.

"No, Erik." She smiled and pressed his fingers reassuringly. "I am not frightened anymore."

He released her and moved back to disappear once more into the darkness, but Christine found she could still see the lingering golden glow of his eyes.

"Call to me upon your return," his voice floated back to her. "I will be waiting for you. I will be waiting…" And then he was gone completely.

Pulling up the soft hood of her cloak, Christine found her way out the exit that led to the Rue Scribe and walked through the crisp morning air around the building to the boulevard where she knew she would be able to purchase some very pretty flowers. She would buy as many as she could carry and bring them back herself. She wondered how much she would be able to carry and still work the key to the gate. A vision of a memory struck her then… Of a young man juggling with an armful of flowers… And handing her a small bouquet of lilies. Echoes of La Juive in her mind… It seemed as if it had been so long ago, but it could not have been more than last week. Those mysterious lilies… Lillies from a ghost. But those fears were all behind her now. She had found the closure she had been needing.

The morning sun glinted over the fresh mounds of snow that billowed about her path like cotton clouds, and Christine thought to herself that this must be what heaven would look like when she arrived there. Even the bell that tinkled as she entered a flower shop sounded like it might be heavenly music to her ears this morning.

However, once inside, and finding herself faced with various lovely arrangements of flowers set out at certain prices, she realized at once, that she did not have any money. She had absolutely nothing but the clothes Erik had provided for her and his key. She would have to go home first. And so she did.

Arriving at the apartment where she lived with her mama, she found the front door unlocked, the maid nowhere about in the dimly lit parlor, and a man's voice coming from her mama's bedroom.

"Even at the Opera?" she heard Mama Valerius speak as she approached the doorway to the room.

"Everywhere," the man responded wearily, and Christine now easily recognized the voice as the gentle timbres of Raoul de Chagny's.

She stopped outside the open door, but the old woman saw her at once and pushed herself up in her sickbed.

"Christine!"

Raoul sprung from his seat, a folded newspaper fallingfrom his lap to the floor, and he whirled about to face her as she hesitantly entered the room.

"Christine! Where have you been? I…received your message."

"What have you done?" her mama continued. "Scaring me half to death, running out in the dead of the night!"

"I'm sorry mama," Christine said softly, trying to think of some way, any way to explain her fearful flight the night before. But upon thought of the matter, she realized that, considering to whom she was speaking, she would be very believed if she simply told the truth. "I saw a ghost, mama. I shouldn't have run away and left you alone…" She sat on the edge of the bed and took up her soft wrinkled hand. "I was mad with fear. Please forgive me…"

The old woman's eyes widened in belief. "A ghost? Here?"

"A ghost?" Raoul asked almost simultaneously, but much more incredulously.

Christine felt her cheeks flush and she kept her eyes focused on where she stroked her mama's hand. "Or perhaps I was dreaming…"

Madame Valerius shook her head and crossed herself with her free hand. "Whatever ghost that thinks it can frighten us here had better just look for somewhere else to haunt."

Christine glanced across at Raoul, then looked away again quickly when she saw how sternly he was staring at her. "Yes, but I think I must have been dreaming," she murmured. "You know I don't believe in ghosts, mama."

"Christine," Raoul repeated. "Where have you been?"

"I… Some… Someone helped me."

"So you needed help then."

Christine looked between the both of them. "I don't know what I needed… I was distraught."

"Who helped you?" her adopted motherasked.

Christine glanced askance at her. "Someone I know, mama. A friend…"

The old woman's eyes seemed to brighten just a bit. "Was it _he?_"

Christine only pressed her lips together, and after a moment, looked up to Raoul. "You are too kind, my friend, to stay here all night with worry over me. Please forgive me…"

"He wasn't here all night," the old woman spoke up. "He was out looking for you! Running off into the night like that, half dressed, and screaming like a madwoman!"

"I…"

"Isn't that how that driver described her, Monsieur de Chagny?"

Christine glanced across at Raoul again warily.

"_Who _helped you?" was all he said.

Christine looked away again. "Everything was fine…"

Raoul cleared his throat and bent to retrieve his newspaper. "Madame, would you mind if I had a word alone with Christine?"

The woman looked up at him. "Why? Well… No, I wouldn't mind. Oh, but I am tired. I am too old for so much excitement."

Raoul offered her a sympathetic smile and then looked again entreatingly to Christine.

She gave her mama's hand one last comforting press, and then she stood and moved around the bed to follow Raoul to the door. Once out of the room, though, her dizziness caught up with her and she swayed slightly. Raoul took her by the arm, turning to her with startled concern.

"Are you all right?"

She shook her head and then passed a hand over her face. "There… It is gone. I only stood up too quickly."

He kept hold of her arm as they moved down the hall to the parlor again. "Have you eaten?"

"Yes, this morning I ate at… I only have a headache."

The pressure of his hand where he held her arm increased. He spoke in a hush that would not reach back to Madame Valerus's ears. "At where, Christine? Where were you all night?"

She gently pulled her arm from him then and turned away, but her voice was no more than a whisper. "That is none of your business."

"You _asked_ for my help." He moved around her to try and see her face. "How can I help you if you do not tell me?"

She turned back to him suddenly. "Please, not here," she said softly. "She might hear us." And she turned and went to the front door, leaving Raoul only to follow her out onto the street and retrace the path they had made the night before.

"Christine," he hissed irritably as he rushed to catch up with her after making certain he had shut the door. "What happened last night?"

"Nothing…" She shook her head. "Just… a nightmare. It was only in my mind."

"And that is why you sent for me?"

"I… I was frightened. I was out of my mind…"

"So it would seem!"

She stopped on the sidewalk just outside of the park and looked at him in shocked offense. She could see the muscles of his jaw clench as he stopped as well and stared at her in obvious doubt.

"You…" she stammered. "You had said, if I needed you…"

"Apparently you didn't need me after all, though, did you!"

"Raoul!" She took a step back away from him.

"You send for me, in this 'desperate fear, like a madwoman,' and then disappear with _him _for the rest of the night!"

She merely stared at him, her lips parted and her brows furrowed, and then she slowly began to shake her head.

He struck his newspaper against his side and then folded his arms and turned away from her, walking to the railing that lined the park's path.

"Raoul," she tried again. "It's over now… I needed your help, but he helped me instead. I am not afraid anymore. It's… It is behind us. All of us. It is over."

His arms fell to his sides and he turned back to face her from where he stood, the snow crunching softly beneath his heel. "But, Christine, it's not. It's not at all." He lifted his newspaper, unfolding it, and turning back a few pages as he returned to her side. "I found this early this morning as I was returning from…my search for you." He found the front page again and then placed the paper in Christine's hands.

The first thing she saw under the name of the Epoque was the picture. It was a portrait of the Pinson family—the Marquis, the Marquise, their teenage son, and two little twin girls. The drawing must have been copied from one that had been done at least a year ago. Below it was the headline: "MURDER."

"They must have stopped the presses the moment they got our anonymous note last night," Raoul explained as Christine's eyes skimmed the article. "All it said, and simply, was that she was unfortunately dead, certainly nothing about murder, but you see what they have done with it."

"Did you write the press?" Christine asked, becoming very uneasy with the discussion of a manhunt she was reading.

Raoul shook his head. "God knows why the police would have told them."

Christine sighed and felt a little weak as the fluttering of her heart overpowered her as she studied the picture again. "But now her family knows… They had the right to know…"

"But see," Raoul tapped a paragraph, moving against Christine's side so that he might read it as well. "They described her again. She was wearing a pink dress and a pair of black leather boots. Her coat and hat were found at the riverbank where she disappeared. Her scarf was found floating much further downstream, but she was not. But look. This time they mention she was wearing a necklace, Christine. A silver necklace with a pendant in the shape of a heart, upon which was written her name and the word—"

"Songbird," Christine gasped. She released the newspaper with one of her hands and a few unimportant pages fell to the ground. Meeting his eyes, her cheeks flushed. "I… I told you it did not belong to me."

"What have you done with it, Christine?"

She folded her free hand over her other wrist and looked away.

"You wear it still…"

"Raoul, it's…"

He shook his head quickly and took her by the arm, turning her to face him. "Nobody else has seen you wearing it, have they? Nobody else knows about this."

She looked up at him, gasping. "No, nobody! Except… Except him of course… And… and oh! That girl! Galerne… At the Opera. Jacqueline Galerne. But she thought it was mine. She said they call me Songbird. She thought it was mine…"

"Can they be trusted?" Raoul asked too nervously.

Christine nodded quickly. "She is a sweet girl… She offered to help me home… She… And _he_… Of course. If it weren't for him… It was he who helped me finally lay her to rest. Elainie…"

Raoul's nerves turned at once into a glower. "You said you lost her."

"I… I did. But he…" She shook her head and looked away. She would never be capable of telling Raoul just what had gone on in those cellars.

"Christine, tell me the truth." He tightened his grip on her arm. "What does _he _have to do with all this?"

She shook her head again. "He only ever does as I ask him, Raoul. He only helped me when I needed him."

"And just how did you need him? How is it that he 'helps' you? This singing teacher of yours who lives underground and just so happens to have a spare room for you to sleep in almost every night now when you find yourself afraid of the dark."

She pulled away from him and took the newspaper between both her hands again. "He has nothing to do with any of this, Raoul, I swear it. He did not even know who she was. He would not have even cared if I had not begged him to help me…"

"Not have even cared about a murdered child?"

She shook her head quickly. "That is not what I meant…"

"I can't imagine how you can claim he treats you so civilly then. If he is so callous."

"Raoul, he's not… He's…" Christine threw up her hands and turned away from him, moving further into the park.

He followed her quickly. "Tell me the truth, Christine. I know this is not charity."

She stopped abruptly and turned back to face him, causing him to stumble in his tracks. "No, Raoul," she said, finally with firmness. "It is not charity. It is friendship. I do not deny the lunacy of my attitude since all this began, but he has been good enough, kind enough, gentle enough to help me through it." She paused and glanced down at the paper in her hands. "Just as you have… Do not accuse him of doing any more or less than you have. You want to help me because you are my friend and you care about my wellbeing. Without his help, I would have surely gone mad."

He looked down into her eyes, hesitating a moment in attempt to find the words he wanted to speak. "I am your friend, but, Christine…"

She shook her head quickly and turned away from him. "There is nothing to say 'but' about."

He lifted a hand and placed his fingertips so very gently on her arm, which was more effective to make her turn back to him than had he wrenched her with the utmost force. "But there is, Christine," he said softly. "You know that…"

She let her eyes linger on his for a moment before she forced them away and shook her head again, finding herself once more focusing on the newsprint picture if only to avoid that dear expression in his handsome face.

"Raoul, I…"

"Yes, Christine?" His fingertips moved up from her arm to the top of her shoulder.

Her heart fluttered and she wanted to tell him something, but as she continued to stare at those two little identical faces in the picture, a much deeper needing welled up within her.

"Raoul, I need to see them. Will you take me to see them?"

His gaze followed hers to the picture and he understood. And so he sighed and withdrew his hand from her shoulder and said very politely, "Yes, Christine. I can. I will."


	11. Wildflower

**Wildflower**

The sparkling silver glow of the morning had grown gradually muter as Christine paced absently across the path of the park in anxious contemplation. "After all, it would be rude of me not to call and express my condolences," she murmured aloud to herself as she continued to wring her hands. "I really should go."

But her words were not unheeded by Raoul, who looked up from where he leant patiently against the path's railing. He lifted a hand to brush a powdery layer of snow from where it had begun to collect on the brim of his hat and then watched as the crystals melted into the smooth wool of his glove.

Christine stopped and turned back to face him. "Wouldn't it?"

He glanced across at her, lowering his hand. His brow creased in a disapproving frown as he further took in her agitation. "Perhaps it would be best if you went home to rest?" he pressed gently.

She stared at him for a moment, then turned away and began to pace once more, wringing her hands all the more desperately. "They really do deserve to hear from me, I think, even if they do not know why. Why, it would be cruel of me to refrain. I really ought to go at once."

Raoul stepped forward suddenly and caught her by the arms, immediately halting her dizzying movements. "Stop trying to justify this with shoulds and shouldn'ts. If you want to go, then go," he said with the softest of sternness. "I have said I would take you. What is it you are afraid of?"

She blinked up at him and then turned again to pull away. "Nothing," she whispered.

He took a step after her. "If it is the scandal that hinders you, then it is they who should be worried, not you."

She shook her head and once more took to wringing her hands, though her feet remained planted where she stood.

He put a hand on her shoulder, but before he could even try to turn her, she pulled away again and took a few more steps down the path that left delicate footprints between them. His shoulders rose and fell in a weary, silent sigh, and then he turned to go back to his place by the railing while checking his watch with the jerky movements of frustration.

The revolving motion of Christine's hands ceased, and now she only wrapped her arms around herself as she stared up at the naked branches of trees above her where the virtuous blanket of snow was stealthily gathering. "Raoul?" she murmured, but did not glance back to see if he was listening. "A pinson is a bird, isn't it?"

She waited for him to speak, but she only heard the snow-muffled sounds of his footsteps.

"Raoul?" she asked again, a note of shrillness entering the soft tone of her voice.

"Yes, Christine." He was directly behind her, and she could see the cloud of his breath as it blew over her shoulder before she felt his arms once more encircle her from behind. This time she did not resist. "Yes. A bird."

She shivered and closed her eyes. "It is snowing."

"Yes. So it is," Raoul said with most generous sweetness.

She sighed softly as he pulled her more closely against him. "I thought it might be warm today," she whispered. "I thought the snow might melt… Like the day she disappeared."

"Why did you think that?"

She turned about in his arms to face him, gazing up into his patient, red-rimmed eyes for a moment before confusion flashed across her own. "I… I don't know. I'm not sure why I thought that…"

He lifted a hand to her face and brushed away a few snowflakes that had fallen there and refused to melt. "Let us go, Christine, or let us not," he said softly. "But either way, let us stay no longer out here in the snow. The wind has begun to blow right through the both of us."

She nodded, but lifted her hands to remove his from her person, and then she began to make her way back in the direction they had come. "Does your brother still know them?"

He quickly fell in stride with her. "He will refuse to have anything to do with them. I doubt he even still will acknowledge their existence… He's said not a word about any of the news…"

She glanced at Raoul as she pulled the soft material of her cloak more closely about herself. "And you… Do you hate them too?"

He met her eyes before she looked away again. "None of it was any of my affair…"

"So you do not?" she pressed.

"I… Christine, I've never even met them."

She stopped and turned to look back at him and then her gaze fell away again to the flickering white. "Neither had I…"

They stopped briefly at her apartment so that she might exchange her cloak for a warmer wrap of furs while Raoul's tired driver readied his carriage to embark again. But by the time they were on their way, the skies had grown considerably darker and the wind had begun to rattle the brougham's windows.

Christine slid closer to Raoul's side where they sat. "Do you think it will storm?"

"For the driver's sake, I hope not." Raoul smiled and lifted an arm to put about her shoulders.

If Christine noticed, she did not object, for her eyes were fixed on the little silver heart that she spun methodically around the chain on her wrist. "What exactly did you tell the police?" she asked, distractedly.

Raoul was silent for a moment before speaking. "The note said that I regretted to inform them that Elainoire Pinson is dead and her body irrecoverable."

Christine nodded. "Yes… Irrecoverable…"

He looked down at her. "You know where she is, don't you." It was not a question.

"I…" She met his eyes and immediately regretted doing so. She did not need to say another word.

Raoul frowned. "But Christine…"

She shook her head quickly. "You do not understand. I cannot make you understand."

He sighed and looked out his own window, withdrawing his arm then from her furred and feathered shoulder. "You do not even want to try."

"Raoul…" She waited, but when he did not glance back to her, she looked away as well, only adjusting her wraps and returning her focus to Elainie's necklace.

As she felt the carriage pull to a stop before the Marquis de Pinson's house on the Rue Saint-Florentin, she tucked the little heart away into her sleeve and tugged up the edge of her glove to save her wrist from the cold and hide the necklace from anyone who might recognize it. The driver opened the door on her side and helped her step down, but when she looked back in to Raoul, she saw that he remained as he was, the back of his shoulder turned toward her and his eyes fixed out the opposite window.

"Won't you come with me?" she asked, her voice wavering in the gusts of breeze.

But he did not look to her, and all he said was, "It is none of my affair. I will wait for you here." So she nodded in silent politeness to the driver and made her way to the marquis's door alone.

It was answered by a sour looking maid with wet hands, who dried them quickly on her apron when she realized who it was that was calling. The elderly woman took Christine's furs and boa and then ushered her into a finely furnished parlor before disappearing to retrieve her master. And in the seconds before the door swung closed, Christine was certain she heard the distant sound of a canary singing from somewhere much deeper within the house.

A comfortable fire drew her to the hearth, and her eyes roved over the painting that hung above it. It was the same one she had seen represented in the newspaper only an hour ago. The marquis and his wife with their three children… The man himself was handsome for his age, which must have been close to fifty. His wife couldn't have been older than thirty-five, but her lovely features were etched with the wisdom of a woman who had been born to be a marquise. The young boy's eyes were filled with all the petulance of a fourteen-year-old first-born aristocratic son. And then there were the two little twin girls, looking absolutely identical, only now that Christine viewed the image in its fully colored shades, she saw that one wore blue and the other wore pink. If they had been dressed alike, she would have never known which one was Elainie. She stepped closer to the portrait, rising up on the toes of her boots, the hem of her dress—she too was wearing pink—swaying dangerously near to the fire's edge.

"We commissioned it last summer."

The female voice caught Christine off guard and she whirled about too quickly, causing herself momentary giddiness. She pressed a hand to her forehead before her eyes were able to focus on the very image of the woman she had just seen in the portrait that hung now behind her, changed only slightly by dreary signs of fatigue that etched about her features.

"Madame la Marquise," Christine nodded to her, her voice too soft.

The woman stepped into the room from the doorway, pulling a soft shawl about the shoulders of her powder green dress. "Mademoiselle Daaé," she returned the nod of respect, though her words were clipped. "It is kind of you to call in our hour of sorrow, but I am afraid the marquis is not at home, and I am not well enough for company."

"Forgive me," Christine said softly. "I was not invited, but I thought someone must express our sympathies…" She pressed a trembling hand over her heart. "On behalf of the Opera, I mean…"

"Oh?" The marquise tilted her head to the side in sudden, subtle interest and a small smile tugged at one corner of the pale lips that well matched the dark circles of sleepless grief beneath her eyes. "Is that so?" She lifted a hand then in a gesture to offer Christine a seat on a pistachio colored couch.

Christine sat gratefully, clasping her hands together above her knees and thought desperately of whether it was wise to speak for the Opera at all. She did feel she could be quite certain that no one else from her company would had ventured to say a word to the scandalized former patrons, but again, there was much reason for that.

"It really is most kind of you," said the marquise again when Christine did not reply. She took a seat in a wing-backed chair on the opposite side of the low table legged with talons. "Would you like something to drink? Annabelle has just made the coffee."

Christine shook her head slightly. "You are not well?" she asked. "I will not stay long."

The marquise dismissed the question with a wave of her hand and flick of her shawl. "I am only as well as can be expected…"

Christine nodded sympathetically.

"Actually, it is curious that you should call," the woman continued, eyeing her warily for a moment. "And on behalf of the Opera."

Christine slowly unfolded her hands. "I call on behalf of myself," she said softly. "This tragedy has broken my heart."

"You are too good to care about us." She shook her head and pressed her eyes closed for a moment. "All of those people we once knew as friends, even in the face of such a catastrophe as this, refuse to put aside their petty differences to come to the aid of an ailing, grieving mother."

"You are not in mourning," Christine noted as politely as she could, wondering if perhaps the woman had somehow not been informed of what even the press had managed to acquire in less than twenty-four hours.

The marquise's head snapped up, her eyes narrowed, and her delicate hand curled into a fist on the arm of the chair. "Don't believe what you read. They are lies. All of them. She is not dead. She is alive and my husband _will _find her."

Christine felt tears sting at the back of her eyes simultaneously as a sudden, shaking wave of nausea spread from her cheeks to her stomach. "How—how do you know?" she stammered.

The marquise dabbed at the corners of her own eyes with a handkerchief she pulled from her sleeve. "I know. A mother knows these things. You are young yet, but when you have children, Mademoiselle Daaé, you will know too. It is the intuition of a woman." She shook her head, and pressed the handkerchief to her lips for a moment before lowering it and clenching her jaw. "You must forgive me. I have been sick with fear for too many days now."

Christine's heart ached mercilessly for her. She was so determined that her little daughter was yet alive. So hopeful. And it made Christine want to weep hysterically. She bit the inside of her cheeks and wished that she had a handkerchief of her own. "I am so sorry… You cannot understand how much I feel… for you and…and your children… I… If only I had known sooner who she was, I would have come…"

"Sooner?" The marquise glanced across at her sharply.

Christine shook her head and was unable to say anything more for a few moments.

The other woman let the strange phrasing pass without another question, and they both sat silently for several very long minutes before she spoke again. "Is that the Comte de Chagny's carriage I saw out front?"

Christine passed a hand before her eyes, letting her glove absorb the tears that had escaped, and she shook her head. "His brother's."

The marquise tilted her head slightly. "The vicomte did not wish to come inside?"

Christine looked across at her evenly then. And simply said "No," with all the diplomatic confidence of a stage performer.

The other woman glanced away and did not press the matter further.

Before the strange tension between them could grow any more awkward, and dreading that she should be dismissed, in a much more entreating tone, Christine asked, "And little Helene must be missing her sister dreadfully?"

A blackness passed before the marquise's eyes, and for a moment, Christine feared that she had angered her, but then the woman only sighed wearily and nodded her head. "At first, she refused to believe at all that Elainoire was gone and nothing we could say could make her understand. I was hardly in any condition to help her myself… I was unconscious for hours that day, and I remember nothing after hearing the news until the next morning." She pursed her lips and her tired eyes narrowed briefly and then softened as she gazed into the fire. "Her denial then passed into a stage of fear, and she woke up screaming every hour of the night. She found no comfort in her new nursie either, and I was forced to sit up with her, letting my own health suffer." She straightened in her chair and folded her hands tightly in her lap. "Babette is a good girl, but has still yet to learn how to care for the children." She paused, then corrected herself, "For Helene…" She shook her head and her lips twisted into a thoughtful scowl.

Christine shifted uncomfortably on the soft sateen of her seat, but it only served to draw the marquise's attention back to her.

"Now, though," the woman continued, "She has suddenly become most bitter and impossible to deal with." She shook her head and her jaw clenched noticeably once more. "But this will be over soon. I know it. And she will return to herself again. The police are fast on the trail of whatever fiend is behind this. My husband is with them as we speak. Something new has arisen. With any luck, it will all be over before tonight." She nodded firmly, her eyes flashing as a whirlwind of snowflakes suddenly beat at the window behind her.

Christine's cheeks had paled so suddenly and her throat constricted, becoming coated in a dryness that tore with pain as she struggled to swallow. She quickly turned to the fire and hoped that her shaking was unnoticeable to the other woman. "How… How could this have happened?" she barely managed to rasp.

The marquise's voice met her ears as if through a wall of water. "Madame Ackart was too old. She had been with us ever since she was wet nurse to my son, Francis. She knew about Elainoire's condition; she had been the first to inform us of it! And yet she sat there on that bench with her eyes closed and dozed off like the old spinster she was. And after all we had done for the woman."

"Her…condition?" Christine stammered tentatively, daring a glance back to the marquise.

She shook her head with sudden energy, her hands clasping and unclasping too tightly around her handkerchief. "My little girl… She would have screamed to high heaven if some fiend had laid hands on her. She would have woken the dead! It was a public place. Someone would have stopped it. But she… She was often subject to headaches...dizzy spells, and even faintness, and Heaven knows who could have taken advantage of her vulnerability if one of her episodes had seized her at that moment." The handkerchief threatened to tear between her hands. "If that old biddy had only had her eyes open—"

Her tirade was suddenly cut short by the shrillest of shrieks that rang like the ghost of a demon through the house. Both women were on their feet immediately and looked to the door. The scream was repeated again, this time followed by sobbing, and somewhere in Christine's mind, she knew she had heard this voice before.

"Mama!" the shriek formed a word this time, and a little girl, half dressed in blue, came flying through the parlor door.

The marquise strode over to her quickly and Helene threw herself into her mother's skirts, burying her face there and sobbed horribly.

Christine could only stare in shock at the bouncing golden curls and the little rosy white back exposed from its undergarment where the buttoning had not been finished on the little blue dress. It was her. It was really her.

The marquise pried her daughter's hands from the back of her legs and knelt down to take her face in her hands. "What is it, my precious little angel? My darling little Wildflower? Why are you screaming when you know your mama is ill?"

"Babette hit me!" Helene sobbed aloud.

The marquise's eyes widened in shock. "No…"

The child's head began to nod furiously. "She did! Mother, she did!" And then a strange and very small smile spread itself against the little, round, red and tearstained cheeks and she lifted a hand to her face. "Mama… Right here!"

Her mother smoothed one hand over the girl's tousled curls, but Christine clearly saw the other clench violently around the handkerchief it still held.

"Dear!—"

All three of them looked to the door again then at the voice of a very out of breath Babette, who came stumbling into the room.

"Oh!" She gasped, her mouth falling open in horror. "Madame!" She curtsied too quickly. "I was just—"

The marquise stood up immediately. "You struck her!"

"No!" The young woman shook her head hastily and took a step back to the door. "I wasn't… It… She…"

Her mistress lifted and arm, and with the sharp point of a finger, gestured for the servant to leave the room. She only glanced briefly then back to Christine and said with barely contained fury, "If you would please excuse me, Mademoiselle Daaé." And then she too left the room, the parlor door swinging closed behind her.

Helene jumped up and down where she stood and clasped her hands together, then turned around and looked at Christine. She froze briefly, then slowly smoothed the front of her dress. "Mother is ill," she said in a much calmer tone of voice. "Company gives her headaches."

Christine could do nothing but stare.

Helene stared back for a few moments before frowning in irritated confusion. "Who are you?"

"My… My name is Christine."

She nodded. "My name is Helene, but you can call me your little Wildflower."

Christine pressed her eyes closed for a moment, shaking her head, then opened them again. She saw the child had begun to attempt to button up her own dress. "Here," she said softly. "I'll help you…" She crossed and knelt beside her, turning her around by her thin shoulder and began to fasten the delicate buttons, repressing the shiver that coursed through her. "Wildflower?" she asked gently.

Helene began to bounce a little on her stockinged toes, making the buttoning slightly more difficult. "It's Papa's name for me," she said. "But Mama uses it too. Everyone except my brother. Francis even calls Elainie Elainoire."

"Oh? What do you call Elainie?"

"Songbird!" She stopped bouncing and twisted slightly to glance back at Christine. "When she's being nice to me."

The last button finished, Christine released her and folded her hands over her knee where she knelt, forcing a shaking smile for Helene's sake as the girl turned about to face her again. "Is Elainie sometimes…not nice to you?"

"She ran away from me." Helene's hands tested the buttons at the back of her neck while her lips twisted into a pout. "She thinks she's better than me at hiding, but I don't care. She doesn't know I stopped looking. I hope what they say about her is true. That will teach her for leaving me. I hope she and Hubert never come back."

Christine blinked slowly. "Who…Who is Hubert?"

Helene turned away from her and went to pull herself up into her mother's chair. She took her time to arrange her little blue skirt prettily, and then reached up to rest her arms against the chair's, crossing her ankles and swinging them idly where they hung above the ground.

Christine waited only one more moment before asking again, "Who is Hubert?"

"Elainie's friend!" Helene chirped.

Christine stood slowly and made her way back to the couch. "Her…Her friend?"

"Yes." It was almost a snap. "She doesn't share him with me. He only talks to her. They keep secrets from me."

"He…" Christine leaned forward slightly, staring across at the little girl who continued to smile despite the still moist tearstains on her cheeks. "Where does he come from?"

Helene shrugged her little shoulders. "The water, I think. She sometimes acts like he isn't there, but she told me he's always there. She said if I let her have my white ribbon, he would let me see him, but he didn't. He never talks to me. Only to her. She told me once he went away, but then I heard her laughing with him. She said she was laughing alone, but I knew he was there. She talks to him when she thinks I'm sleeping. She gets up at night and chases him downstairs and Madame Ackart has to run after her." A shrill peal of laughter filled the parlor. "She turns blue and purple when she runs! She… But Babette only turns red. When is Madame Ackart coming back?"

"I…" Christine shook her head. "I don't think she will be coming back…"

Helene frowned, but it was less like a pout and more like a slow growing of understanding that tugged with aching fingers at Christine's heart. When the girl spoke again, her voice was much softer and all the more childlike, "When is Elainie Songbird coming back?"

Christine choked on a sudden sob, and had to lift a hand to her mouth to hide it.

"Are you crying?" The little girl tilted her head to the side, her golden curls falling over her shoulder, and her own lip began to quiver.

Christine shook her head quickly and pulled off her glove to wipe at her eyes. "No...No… I'm…I'm not crying, and neither should you…" But the parlor was already swimming beyond a window of tears.

"Why are you crying!" Helene demanded, fear belying the command of her tone.

"Hush…hush…" Christine rose immediately and crossed around the table to kneel before the chair. "Nobody here is crying, see?"

But Helene was crying, and she lifted her hands to push Christine away as she shook her head back and forth violently and began to kick her feet. "You're just like they are! You think she's not coming back! You want me to be all alone!" She hiccupped between her words.

Christine reached for her, but she only turned where she sat and buried her head in her arms against the arm of the chair, her narrow back heaving in much more pathetic sobs. Christine pressed her lips together and looked to the parlor door nervously, then lifted a comforting hand to the girl's shoulder. "Hush… I don't want you to be alone…" She reached around and lifted the little, moist face so she could look into the big, round eyes. "I'll be your friend if you like…"

The girl swallowed thickly and seemed about to speak, but then her eyes flickered to Christine's wrist. "What's that?"

Christine's head suddenly felt far too light.

Little hands reached out and dug into Christine's sleeve.

"I know what that is!"

Christine stood abruptly, pulling away from the child much too roughly. Giddiness seized her at once in its nauseating grip and she staggered back towards the fire.

The startled girl stared at her for a moment, then reached up and pulled a silver chain from within the collar of her dress. "Mine says Wildflower… Yours says Songbird…like Elainie's…"

Christine's vision blurred into a white fog, the flickering from the hearth barely managing to penetrate it as no more than the flashing of fireflies. Her breathing echoed in her ears with the distant buzzing of the music of grasshoppers. Somewhere there was a couch where she could find her balance, but her fluttering hands were unable to locate it as she drifted in half the speed of dying reality.

"No…" she tried to speak, but without breath her word was inaudible. She needed to breathe. She needed to find air. A cool gust of it suddenly brushed against her face, and she gasped to take it in. "No," she said again, and this time her words were heard.

"But…" The little girl's voice pierced through the humming of the fog.

Christine shook her head and exhaled heavily as the parlor began to return to focus.

"Mademoiselle Daaé?" A timid voice from the doorway caught her attention.

Christine looked up to again see the girl, Babette, who had indeed turned quite red in uneven splotches across her face. Her hair seemed to have been shaken out of place, but she carried Christine's furs over one arm. Her eyes were rimmed in pain and raw from too many of her own tears, but she managed to curtsey most politely and kept them downcast. "Madame de Pinson is not well," she stammered. "She…she wishes you her goodbyes and…and her apologies. She has…has retired to bed for the rest of the day." She bit her lip then and seemed as if she meant to look up, but willed her eyes to stay on the carpet. "Come…come again, soon?" she barely managed to add in the faintest of whispers.

By the time she had done speaking, Christine's faculties had fully returned to her. She nodded quietly and glanced back to Helene, but the girl had folded her hands demurely in her lap and sat with her gaze fixed out the windows.

"Goodbye, Helene," Christine murmured gently.

The child only glanced quickly in Christine's direction, then looked away again. But the look of dark and frightened suspicion in that brief glance was unmistakable.

Christine shivered and moved to take her wraps from Babette, and then she hurried out the door. She did not make her exit fast enough, though, that she did not overhear the last bit of conversation from the parlor:

"Come, little miss," Babette beckoned wearily.

"I want to see Mama," Helene snapped back.

"Mama is resting…"

"No! I want to see her now. I need to tell her something!"

Christine did not linger to hear another word and found her own way out and back to where she had left Raoul and his carriage. It wasn't there. She shivered and glanced both ways down the snowy street, but the morning had grown most desolate and dark, and wind-whipped flurries obscured any vision of distance. She pulled her furs more tightly about herself and found her glove again to replace it where it belonged upon her trembling hand.

Why would Raoul have abandoned her? He had said he would wait for her. Perhaps the wind had grown too brisk for the horses and driver… Perhaps she had hurt him more than she had realized… She was tired. She hoped she would be able to find a cab to take her back home, but the weather appeared most inclement and she doubted many would be about. And then she realized for the second time that morning that she was not in possession of a single cent. She looked back over her shoulder at the house behind her. Nothing within her wanted to go back inside. A curtain moved at an upstairs window, and then all was still once more.

She shivered again and turned with the resignation to walk, but after she had only gone but a few steps, the sound of hoofbeats from behind warmed her heart.

Raoul's brougham pulled up alongside her and he pushed the door open himself from within and offered her a hand.

"I thought you had gone," she whispered as she settled onto the seat at his side, brushing snowflakes from her shoulders.

He offered her a smile of concern. "It became too cold for the horses to stand still. You are pale, Christine."

She exhaled a shuddering breath and pressed a hand to her face as she glanced out the window as they went, already unable to see the house behind them through the white air. "I…"

"I must insist now that you go home and take your rest."

She shook her head and met his eyes again. "Flowers. I must buy some flowers."

A noticeable flinch passed across Raoul's face. "Flowers, Christine?"

She nodded. "But I must go home first."

"Yes…" He lifted a hand and very gently placed it over hers in her lap. "You must go home and rest."

"No, Raoul. I won't stay long."

"Christine, you look as if you have not slept all night."

"I slept…" she frowned, pushing away her memories of the previous night.

"After you ran out of your house like a madwoman?"

She pulled her hands from his and turned slightly away from him on the seat. "I did not sleep after I left, no. But I am not tired."

He took her most lightly by the shoulder. "You are shaking…"

"It is cold."

"You are pale…"

"Raoul." She faced him again. "I will thank you to drive me home but not to instruct me what to do once I am there."

"I am worried about you Christine."

And before she could form the words to answer him, her voice was stopped as she suddenly recognized in his eyes the exact same look of fear that had passed so terrifyingly through Erik's.

Her lips parted in a soft gasp and she pulled away form him, burying her face in her hands.

He reached to take her by the shoulders again, but she would not let him and so silent distance remained between them until the carriage stopped at her apartment. Raoul accompanied her within, but she spoke nothing to him. She did not even voice an objection when, after waiting for her to hand her furs to the maid, he followed her into her benefactress's room.

The old woman stirred and looked up at them. "Ah, my cherubs!" She smiled sleepily. "My dear snow fairies!"

Christine took her outstretched hand and sat on the edge of the bed. "I've just come back to say goodbye, Mama."

The woman's eyes widened, losing all of their good humor. "You aren't leaving me again!"

Christine pressed a kiss to her soft cheek. "Not for long, I promise."

"I agree with Madame Valerius," Raoul interjected.

Both women looked to him immediately, Christine with ire and her adopted mother with concern.

"Christine is not well at all, Madame. She should stay home in bed."

Christine stood. "Do not tell me what I should or should not do."

The old woman grasped after Christine's hand. "Is this true, Christine? You are pale. Your hands are like ice. Please stay here. Don't go back out into the cold."

"Listen to her if you will not listen to me," Raoul said in tones suddenly so pleading that Christine lost all resolve. "I am very worried about you."

The fretful hands that clawed helplessly at Christine's arm finally drew her back to sit on the bed again with a sigh. "I am not…" was all she could manage before her words lost her.

Raoul took a couple steps back toward the door. "I will tell your maid to prepare something warm for you. Please rest. Please call for me in the morning. Or this evening if you like… I will be waiting for your call… I will be waiting..."

No one answered him, and so he left. When he was gone, Christine turned to the fearful and confused eyes of Mama Valerius, beside her. "It's all right, Mama. He's worried over nothing."

"I don't like this…" But the old woman only shook her head wearily and pulled her girl into her arms.

Christine listened closely for the sounds of the carriage's departure, but they never came. Perhaps the wind carried them away, or perhaps, as she waited for her mama to drift back to sleep so that she might make her escape, sleep claimed her as well. For she had only closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, she was in a field of green, a sea of blue, and entirely alone.

She was warm and it must have been summer again, for she found she was more than comfortable in the night air without one thread of clothing about her. "Wildflowers grow in the sea," she whispered to herself. "Songbirds fly in the grass."

They surrounded her. Flowers and birds. She smiled brightly and lifted a hand to one that lit past her fingertips. She bent and plucked up a flower, letting its petals float away in the wind.

_"Wildflower," _its breathy voice echoed past her ear, tangled through the billowing strands of her hair. _"Wildflower…"_

"No…" Christine whispered. "No… Songbird."

_"Wildflower…" _And the wind had already begun to moan.

Christine spun about, but the horizon was endless. "Songbird," she called. "Not Wildflower, Songbird! It is me you want...You want _me._"

_"Wildflower..."_ The wind was beating against the walls of her world with pounding cracks. Two little girls skipped toward her, hand in hand, through the rolling fields. One was pink with life, the other blue with frozen death. They were wild. They were singing.

"No!" she gasped. She knew what it wanted now.

_"Wildflower!" _shrieked the bottomless voice of the wind, and then she saw _him _coming towards them. Rushing with the all speed of life at the three of them, a demon of death through the night.

Christine screamed, but the sound choked into a strangled gasp in her throat as she pulled herself awake in her mama's bed. She clutched at her own face furiously to make certain she knew what was real, and then she looked slowly down at the still sleeping countenance beside her.

She had known resting would not be a good idea.

Panting heavily, she pushed her hands back through her hair and straightened the ache that had grown in her back from the awkward position she had remained in for she did not know how long.

The wind was beating against the walls of her world with pounding cracks.

But no, the cracks were not pounding as they had in her dream… They were there, but more distant. Further away. Her eyes followed the sound to the dark hallway beyond her mama's bedroom door. _Tap…tap…tap…_ It was a regular sound, like the beating of a loose shutter or the knocking of a hand at a pane of glass.

She stood, slowly, carefully, very certain not to make herself lightheaded, and made her way out of the room. Yes, the sound was louder in the hall. _Tap…tap…tap…_ She paused and listened closely. It was coming from the right. _Tap...tap…tap…_ The light of day that lingered to illuminate Christine's view of the hallway was too dark and too grey, but she used it to follow the sound to her own bedroom door, and pushing it open slowly, she peeked in.

"Is anyone there?" she whispered.

_Tap…tap…tap…_

The door creaked protractedly as her groping fingers urged it open with no more than a child's strength. _Tap…tap…tap…_

She glanced about the room. Her bed was made… Not as she had left it the night before. But the window was still closed. _Tap…tap…tap…_ Closed and vibrating softly with each of the sharp raps that jolted her heartbeat into attention. _Tap…tap…_

She would have told herself it was a tree branch, blown by the wind against the glass of the small balcony doors, but she knew there was no tree there. There should have been nothing beyond those windows but a simple railing and a blizzard of snow.

_Tap…tap…_ Should have been.

Clenching and unclenching her hands about the folds of her skirt, she moved around the bed like the most reluctant of hypnotist's subjects. Someone wanted to be let in. Someone wanted her to open the window.

"It is snowing," she barely managed to whimper.

_Tap…tap…tap…tap…_

Someone must have been very cold.

When she lifted her hand to the curved latch, she watched it shake as if it were not even part of her but only an item of separated and simple curiosity.

_Tap…tap…_

She opened the door.

The wind seized her at once with hard and frozen wings that stung her cheeks like shards of glass. Gasping, she threw her arms over her head until the force subsided enough for her to notice that the tapping sound had ceased. There was nothing. Nothing at all. Except a simple railing and the ceaseless torrent of snow and a very dead and frozen songbird lying half buried at her feet.


	12. Waiting

**Waiting**

Two little girls, both exactly alike in every way, except that one was alive and one was dead. Who was Hubert? An imaginary friend… But had dear Elainie truly thought that this Hubert was real? Or perhaps he was real… A hallucination? A dream? He must have certainly been as real as the little dripping child Christine had seen in her bedroom but a few late nights ago. As real as the cold, hard, blood-soaked shape that she had pulled from the icy waters of her bathtub. Had the departed Elainoire Pinson perhaps been mad to hold conversations with this figment of her imagination as her sister suggested? Had she been any more mad to believe in this Hubert than Christine was to openly speak to the apparition that left wet a trail of footprints upon her carpet?

Who was he? A memory? A delusion? A ghost? But Christine didn't believe in ghosts. She didn't. Ghosts weren't real.

But what _was_ real? Little Elainie was dead. She had died from a tumor in the brain. Erik had said that such a tumor could cause hallucinations...and a stroke. And so she had had a sudden death, and she had somehow been washed down into Erik's lake. He often found the strangest of things washed into his lake. She had been near the river. Had someone dropped her in? Had she fallen in? A sudden flash of death and then a washing away in a stream that made no sound. She had been hiding. Hiding in a game with her dear, little sister. Perhaps she had hidden where she shouldn't. For she hadn't been well. Her mother had said so. Headaches, dizziness, spells of faintness. If only the poor, grieving woman had known why. But to tell her why, Christine would have to tell her what she'd had done to that dear, little daughter of hers. What she'd begged to have done because she couldn't rest until she knew _why_…

Christine pressed her eyelids tightly against two tears that threatened to freeze there in the harsh winter wind that whipped down the avenue and clawed at her numb cheeks as she made her way carefully through the still-soft drifts of snow. Erik had only ever done as she had asked… And now he was waiting for her, down there, among all that death. She knew now that she had wasted too much time satisfying her own mad needs, and she would not make him wait any longer, not even until the roads had been cleared after the storm, before she set out to purchase her flowers. She didn't want to see that look of fear in his eyes again. He was worried and he was waiting and he had promised never to leave her again, but she had gone anyway. He would have come, she knew, if she had asked. He would have done anything she had asked. So patiently. And she would not make him wait any longer.

The sky was absolutely clear now, and as blue as dark ice perhaps an hour before sunset, but she could still see each puff of her own breath before it blew away in the wind as she stopped to read the headline of a newspaper displayed in the window of a tobacconist not too far from the Opera. She hesitated momentarily and then stepped inside to purchase a copy. Raoul had taken his clippings with him and Christine wanted a one to keep. She folded open the pages as the man behind the counter made change for her coin until she found again the small black and white Pinson family portrait. Now since she had seen it in color, she knew which girl was which, and the fingertips of her glove brushed each of their faces while her sigh was loud enough to catch the attention of the shopkeeper.

"It's a sad story, isn't it, miss?"

Christine glanced up at him and nodded silently.

"I've been following it. It's a sad, sad thing when a creature will accost a child that young and do God knows what with her. But you see there, they say they know she's dead now. It's a mercy, I suspect."

Christine shook her head and folded the newspaper again. "There is no mercy in it…"

The man sighed and nodded to a couple new people that entered the shop before he answered her. "I supposed there isn't. It's a sad, sad thing. But I've heard from some people who've come past from the police station just down the street that they know who's done it now. They'll make it right, miss, they'll make it right."

Christine looked up at him again, quickly. "They do?"

"Oh yes. New developments have arisen. New tips, new leads. Our surete are a smart force. When someone like the Marquis de Pinson is wronged, they get to the bottom of it and won't stop until they find that girl, dead or alive, and give her back to her family."

"But," Christine stammered and glanced back over her shoulder as someone left the shop and someone else entered. "But how do you know what they know is right? How do they know?"

He shrugged and turned to help another customer though he continued to speak to Christine. "I suppose we'll have to wait for tomorrow's paper to find the answer to that, miss."

She shook her head and took a step back from the counter, but the man did not seem to notice then as he moved away to find cigarettes for his customer.

She could hear him speak, "Here you go, constable, the usual." But she was already on her way out the door. She had to pause, though, on the step as she nearly opened the windowed door directly into a woman there who was about to enter.

"Excuse me," Christine murmured, and she stepped aside to allow her to pass before continuing through. She had not quite managed to leave the shop completely, however, before the soft tones of the woman's voice caught her attention.

"Christine Daaé? Is that you?"

Christine froze and then turned around slowly to look back into the started face of Jacqueline Galerne.

"I…I'm sorry," Christine barely managed to say. "I didn't recognize you at first… I…"

Jacqueline stared at her in silence for a moment and then glanced over her shoulder into the shop before looking back to Christine, finally, with a sort of a smile. "We all have our faces tucked away from the cold. And this wind. If you had not spoken, I would have not recognized you either. But…what a surprise to see you here and now. Why, I have just come from—" She stopped speaking then, cutting herself off deliberately and simply smiled once more almost nervously before glancing back into the shop again.

The constable who had been purchasing cigarettes stepped past her and smiled to both of the ladies before passing through the door. He stopped once outside and nodded back to Jacqueline once. She returned the gesture, but her eyes flickered to Christine, and then she covered her mouth and suppressed a small, nervous sneeze.

Christine's own eyes followed the constable for a few silent moments as he made his way down the street and then she looked back to Jacqueline. "I… Yes… It is cold. It was nice to see you again. I will see you at rehearsal? I must go. Goodbye."

Jacqueline gasped, and took a step after her. "Wait!"

But Christine had already begun to make her own way quickly down the street in the opposite direction. There was a humming in her ears that she thought must be the trembling of her heart, but she could not imagine why. Her hands ached and she looked down at them to realize that she had been gripping her newspaper far too tightly. She tucked it under her arm and turned the corner at the end of the street down an alleyway.

"Flowers," she whispered to herself. "Flowers."

The sharp sounds of a child's laughter suddenly echoed in the alley behind her and she stopped, whirling about to find its source. There was no one there. No one at all. Christine was utterly alone.

"Flowers!" she gasped again, and turning once more, she began to run.

By the time the little bell tinkled her arrival to the same flower shop on the main boulevard that she had entered that morning, her cheeks were red and she was most out of breath.

"Madame?" The young woman behind the counter looked up with surprise from the roses she was dethorning.

Christine shook her head and pressed a hand to her chest, forcing her breath to slow before she spoke. "Lilies. White ones."

The girl put down her clippers and brushed off her hands, then she smoothed her apron and nodded. "Of course, madame. Are they for delivery?"

"No," Christine shook her head again and took a few slow steps away from the closed door into the warmth of the shop, noticing that she was the only customer. "I'll take them now."

The young woman nodded again and moved to a glass cupboard. "How many lilies? With fern, of course?"

"Yes. Six. No… Twelve. Yes, please. A dozen. She deserves a dozen."

"Of course, madame." She glanced at Christine warily. "If you would like to…have a seat? I will arrange them while you wait."

Christine only nodded again and sank down into a chair by the slowly darkening window. Her head pounded with a pain so audible that it almost drowned out the soft rustling sounds of the preparation of the bouquet.

"Madame?"

She lifted her eyes in response to glance over at the girl as she was tying the ribbons around the paper.

"Are you quite all right? You have grown paler by the moment since you walked in the door…"

Christine was about to nod, but she felt as if moving her head would be a grave mistake. "Yes, thank you," she whispered.

"It's this weather." She cut another piece of tape. "Snowing one minute like it's the apocalypse and then frozen the next without a cloud in the sky but wind enough to drive a fleet. It'll take the breath out of anyone, I'd say."

"Yes," was all Christine managed again.

"And I really don't think I've seen the air this clear in I don't know how long." She turned the finished bouquet over on the counter and adjusted some of the arrangements of the leaves. "The stars will be out tonight, that's for certain, and the moon."

Christine did not attempt to respond this time and only thought to herself that she would see neither stars nor moon from Erik's catacombs no matter how calm the night or how clear the air.

"Here you are, madame," said the girl who could not have been more than three years younger than Christine herself. "Your white lilies."

Christine tore her eyes from the sky beyond the window and pushed herself up from her chair as carefully as she could manage before approaching the counter. "Thank you," she began as she withdrew the money to pay for them but then she stopped short as she saw that the flowers had been wrapped in black tissue.

The shop girl followed her gaze. "For a funeral, aren't they?" Then she looked back to Christine and quickly put a hand to her mouth. "Oh, madame, I'm sorry! You didn't say that at all, did you? I don't know why I thought—!"

Christine shook her head and picked up the bouquet. "No…I didn't. But you were right." She turned her gaze and met the girl's eyes with bewilderment.

The young woman shook her head and forced a smile. "You are certain?"

"Yes…" Christine nodded very slowly and as she seemed to rotate where she stood, turning back to the door. "Yes, I think it is about time for a funeral…"

There was the soft tinkling sound of the bell then, and a policeman entered the shop. Christine did not look at him as she passed, cradling her lilies, but he looked at her.

The boulevard had become crowded with the shoppers who had been delayed by the storm and were now attempting to finish their business before it grew completely dark. She had taken only a few steps down the snowy sidewalk before she realized that the man was following her. And he was not alone. Her breath quickened with her pace, but their footsteps only became all the more audible behind her. Who were they? What did they know? Nothing. Nothing… Erik had only done as she had asked…

She glanced back over her shoulder once and then stopped walking, exhaling very slowly, and then turned around to face the small group of three men that approached her. A police carriage was parked a few shops away.

"Christine Daaé?" one of them spoke.

She nodded once and then found herself suddenly very aware of the scent of the lilies beneath her nose. How did he know her name? There was nothing he could know… Little Elainie was dead. Erik had sewed her back up like a rag doll and she only needed her flowers! All Christine wanted to do was bring her the flowers she deserved!

The policeman glanced over at his partners and then looked at her squarely, as he stopped just before her. "You are under arrest."

"No!" she gasped, her eyes widening as she took a step back. "I didn't kill her!"

The policeman signaled to the other two to move around her before she could move any further away.

Her eyes darted around the street but there were two many people milling through the dusk and the streetlamps had not yet been lit. She could recognize no one. Her gaze snapped back the police carriage as its side door opened and her eyes finally came to rest on a face she knew. Jacqueline Galerne wore the same soft and almost too charming smile that had set Christine a wonder only yesterday. Christine choked, her hand flew to her mouth, and the tiny silver heart at her wrist found its way out of her glove to burn its warmth into the flesh of her cheek.

"Come with us," a gruff voice spoke from behind her.

She looked back and took a step to the left, but the third man was there. Her gaze dropped to her flowers, then snapped back to Jacqueline, then flitted briefly to each of the policemen, and then finally was drawn to a hearse that was being driven down the street on her right.

"No!" she screamed again, and swinging her bouquet around, flowers scattered into the three men's faces and she ran out into the street directly into the path of the black horses. She passed them so closely that their hot breaths moistened her cheeks and their startled whinnies drew the attention of everyone on her side of the street. Hands reached out to support her and voices begged to know if she was all right after such a close brush with death, but she pushed them aside, unseeing, and took off through the crowd to run down a side street. Her black boots slipped with every step on the icy cobblestones, but her speed only increased. She rounded corners blindly and the only thing she found herself aware of was that she seemed to be running downhill.

Voices, shouts from behind. They were after her. They would catch her! She couldn't let them! She couldn't go with them! Erik was waiting for her. Erik who had always done only as she had asked. She knew it was her own fault. Her mind was screaming in pain, and the white world around her had begun to grow much whiter. With each panting breath, her heartbeat seemed to double its tempo until it reached a maddening whir that would not cease.

Hide. She would have to hide. If she hid well, they would not be able to find her! Where was she? There was a bridge. And a walkway. The river! So soon! She could hide here! This was where Elainie had hid. This was where they would not find her.

Christine flew down the walkway like a wild bird. There was a railing and some stairs. If they couldn't see her now, if they weren't watching, they wouldn't know where to look. She glanced back. She saw nothing and everything. She took her chance, and she descended.

The wind was all the stronger here and all at once it tugged the very furs she wore from around her shoulders and they disappeared into the dark. But it was a good hiding place! Helene would never find her here. She would win the game! If only she could quiet her breathing. The current of the river rushed past beneath her, but her breathing might still give her away. It was dark now and the stars were out, but if she could not be quiet, she would be found. She had to hold on to the railing to make certain she did not fall, but she used her other hand to cover her mouth tightly.

Gasping against her glove, her head rolled back and beyond the wildly flying strands of her hair, the stars very quickly began to blur. Each one of them grew larger like the approach of far-away fireflies, inflating like a million sunrises, until they began even to merge into each other. Distantly Christine thought that they would stop, that they would come back into focus, but they did not, and quite soon the entire sky was ablaze with one magnificent golden light that consumed her completely and then faded to black.

Her fingers slid from where they clung to the railing and the water made no sound as she slipped through it. It wasn't even cold. Her hand floated away from her mouth and she blinked her eyes but once to look up at the moon as it shimmered above her as if it were only a reflection of itself.

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There had come a time when Erik would allow Christine to go back to the world of the living as she pleased, knowing that she would return to him. It was good for her to get out of doors and be reminded of why she needed him. And so he waited for her. He would wait hours, he would wait days. In truth, he often did not know the difference as time slipped by meaninglessly without her.

But tonight, as the hours grew later, they dragged against each other and he was already more than concerned. The warm air of his home irritated him and so he took to pacing along the bank of his lake, down to one end and then back to the other. The further he walked, the longer he would take to return. Stone and black moss. When she returned, he would take her back to that tomb once more, and then never again. Things would return to normalcy between them then. The new opera would open next week and she would triumph over Paris again. Her soul would return to him. There would be no thoughts of death to distract her from her singing. No thoughts of death that made her probe his face and dream about his hands. And yet, all he could think of was that morning when her back had pressed against him while the potent stench of death had filled the air. He forced his mind back to the scenery that surrounded him. Blue and black and grey. He would walk all the more slowly. There was not even enough force of air in his stride to billow the black folds of his hooded cloak.

And it was not until Erik had begun to retrace his steps again back in the direction of the false dock where his boat waited that he was startled to a stop by the sight of something marring the seamless edge of the water. Something white…Something pink and white.

He stared at it in irritation for no more than a moment before common sense and a sudden surge of fear bade him move closer! He reached it in less than a heartbeat and fell upon his knees where the water met the ledge. It was Christine! His Christine! Half submerged and bobbing gently up against the stone.

A cry of anguish exploded from his masked lips and he tore her from the water, pulling her into his lap. So cold! And her lips had already taken on the shade of blue. Tiny ice crystals clung to her golden lashes and her face was frozen in perfect peacefulness, though Erik knew she could not have been floating there for long. He had just been here an hour ago!

"Please!" he moaned. Tears coursed down his mask even as her icy wetness soaked through his own clothing where he clutched her body against his chest and rocked back and forth on his knees amidst sobs that could not be controlled.

But she was dead. Quite dead. And as one built up of death, he knew this.

He pulled back just a little then so that he could look at her face. She had been so full of life. And it seemed all at once to him that he knew she had not drowned.

He brushed back her wet hair from where it clung to the sides of her head and then placed one of his long, white hands across her smooth brow until his tears began to cover that too. "It doesn't matter," he whispered. "I do not want you any less." And then he slipped his arm beneath her legs and stood, lifting her into the air, and cradled her against his black-robed chest.

Quietly, he carried her along the bank of the silent lake back to where she belonged.

Erik could not see the pale figures of two golden-haired, blue-eyed songbirds in pink dresses clasp hands behind him in the darkness of the catacombs. Such visions were not meant for him to see. But they saw him. And they watched him until he was gone.

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**The End.**


End file.
